Hot Docs 2023 Film Review - Smoke Sauna Sisterood

Nestled in an Estonian forest lies a wooden sauna beside a small lake.  A group of female regular inhabitants seeking refuge with the knowledge they can speak freely and openly on any topic that comes to mind. This tradition is elemental to the Estonian Voro community. Bodies of all shapes and sizes on display. This particular peer group is into or approaching  middle age still scared by stinging comments about their looks hurled at them by their mothers decades ago. The story starts in the wintertime as the women go from their discussion inside the smoke sauna trekking through the snow and into a  swimming hole cut in the nearby freezing lake for a different physical experience. They chant,lay on the wooden sauna benches, and out in the snow. Pour buckets of water on themselves and each other and use birch whisk bundles to massage each other to clean the skin and improve  blood flow and circulation.  

Water and steam are the lifeblood of the experience. droplets fall everywhere. Beads form on all sections of the sauna and dot every body part. Director Anna Hints' lens is closely trained on each moment of activity as it unfolds. Men and the patriarchy are as expected major topics. Struggles to survive in a male-dominated society. Even a survey on who has received dick pics.The conversation probes today's issues and tales are told dating back to the women's grandmother's time. Including the reality of no clear path to escape a loveless or evan an abusive marriage two generations back.   

Ants Tammik's cinematography is particularly stunning. The small windows to the outside world are bathed in light. A stark contrast to the dark shadowy interior of the sauna full of bodies and steam clouds rising. Sound also plays a vital role. Whether it's the rhythmic chanting. Smacking of birch whisks on skin. Water and wooden buckets being filled overflowed and spilled. Or the rising and falling of voices as stories are told.  Director Hints takes her time with her vulnerable subjects. Each is allowed to put as much of themselves on film in line with their individual comfort level. 

Two stories stand out amongst the tales told in the film. The first, a bather tells the details of coming out to her parents. The viewer can hear the anxiety and trepidation in her voice as she vividly remembers the event. The cumulation of which was her father's reaction which she feared the most but amounted  no big deal at all. The other was a recount of a teenage rape followed by a second sexual assault that same evening. The bather lying on her back with the crook of her arm across her eyes gives a specific chronological account of those terrifying events with the others in the communal group fixated on every word. She is surrounded by encouraging support then the bathers exit out into the lush green grass of the forest and into a much warmer summertime lake. The smoke saunas of Southern Estonia  are UNESCO listed Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Structures as noted in the closing titles.  They are a place of healing of the physical and the spiritual in unison.

***1/2  Out of Four.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood | Italy/Norway | 2023 | 89 Minutes.

Estonia, Smoke Sauna, Pregnancy, Forest, Lake, Steam, Birch Whisks, Motherhood, Nudity.