Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

In a specifically Estonian context, women in a sauna talk about their experience of life.

This unusual award-winning documentary can be said to have two purposes. The first of these is specific to its setting, this being a film by Anna Hints shot in Southern Estonia. It is exclusively concerned with a sauna for women, one that serves the Võro community and does so as part of their smoke sauna tradition that has been listed by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. Filming took place there over some months and the film’s Estonian flavour is enhanced by its music score and by the exterior shots of the sauna’s rural location. Indeed, the colour photography by Ants Tammik is notable throughout, not least for the quality of the lighting. In this way the setting is made vivid, but the film has no commentary and, regardless of passing references to smoke saunas and to spirit saunas, extra background information about the history and range of this historical institution that might have been welcomed by outsiders is not included.

If that matters little it is because the film’s second purpose is very much its main feature. Had the title not been used already, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood might well have been called Women Talking. Central to this documentary – and indeed its prime achievement – is the opportunity that it provides to hear women at ease expressing themselves naturally in a totally female environment. It could be that some of what is said was set up or recreated for filming, but it never feels like that. What we hear sounds spontaneous and natural, talk that is consequent on the communal familiarity shared by these women as regular attendees of this sauna.

In point of fact there is little sense of this film being shaped in any way beyond it being a series of conversations touching on subjects of particular concern to women or on more general issues seen from a female viewpoint. This often finds these women looking back on their own experiences but it also reflects social change when comparisons are made with the lives and attitudes of their parents and grandparents. If pressure to marry and a desire for greater independence are referenced in their talk, so too are more directly personal tales about being lesbian and the impact of undergoing an abortion. Other reflections touch on controlling parents who meant well, on the tragedy of giving birth to a dead child and, most dramatically and tragically of all, a terrible story of rape which makes for an intense climax to the film. But, for all the trouble and sad recollections that emerge, there is a spirit among these women which enables them to laugh things off in a way that eases their situation.

As director Anna Hints divides up her film so that the viewer is given regular intervals when the talk ceases and the atmosphere of the place becomes central. These scenes are often enhanced by wordless vocals in the evocative music score and by a sense of poetry in the visuals which even on occasion extend to touches of abstraction. It is also the case that Hints is clearly dealing with women who are at ease with being filmed, the nudity natural to the situation never being eroticised and, whenever at certain moments it becomes appropriate to do so, she opts to exclude the actual faces of individuals from the images in order to provide an extra degree of privacy.

Anna Hints has certainly made a good film, but ultimately this is a case in which to an exceptional degree the value of it for the audience depends on the depth of interest that individual viewers bring to the subject matter. What matters here is that anyone who is drawn to a work in which women talk honestly about their experiences and their attitudes to life will find this a thoroughly rewarding documentary.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring  Kadi Kivilo, Maria Meresaar, Elsa Saks, Marianne Lliv, Eva Kübar, Luis Kuresco, Eda Veeroja, Maria Aasa, Merit Kask, Lena Kuura, Kerttu Muslap, Sandra Lepik, Signe Mallo.

Dir Anna Hints, Pro Marianne Ostrat, Screenplayy Anna Hints, Ph Anta Tammik, Ed Anna Hints, Qutaiba Barhamji, Hendrik Mägar, Martin Männik and Tushar Prakash, Music Edvard Egilsson & Eeter.

Alexandra Film/Kepler 22 Production/Ursus Parvus-Conic.
89 mins. Estonia. 2023. UK Rel: 13 October 2023. Cert. 15.