Smoke rises over the rugged snow-covered landscape. It’s ice-cold outside, inside there’s sweating. The documentary SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD by director Anna Hints follows a group of Estonian women in their traditional ritual of the smoke sauna. “Hello, dear Sauna,“ says each one before entering the wood cabin that is heated by a stone oven. When they leave they say thank you – to the sauna itself and the women “who do the labor,“ who make all of these experiences possible. The intimate conversations among women are just as important as the sauna, ice baths, and the mutual massages. Too thin, too fat, just not right – these feelings, that their mothers transmitted to them already as children, is sweated out here as well as the memories of disease, violence, death, and shame. Many viewers will recognize themselves in the sauna stories and easily understand why a ritual like this can be necessary in order to deal with life and death.

Countless generations of women have build such tight-knit communities – and yet continued to nurture patriarchal society. The film doesn’t just celebrate tradition, but also the achievements of feminism: it is finally time in which girls aren’t worth less than boys, the female body isn’t constantly judged and denounced, it can just exist. The excellent camera work makes that clear again and again. Calmly and clearly, SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD shows breasts, stomachs, backs, shivering flesh, bodies in motion. Seeing naked women’s bodies filmed in this way, far away from objectification and sexualization, might feel as freeing as stepping out of the sweat lodge and feeling the ice-cold air on your face.

Eva Szulkowski

Translation: Elinor Lewy