User Reviews

The very best documentaries open your eyes to a world that you never knew existed. They take you into the heart of that place where you're more than an observer but less than a participant.

"Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" achieves that feat on a number of levels. For a start I know nothing about Estonia and even less about its tradition of enjoying rustic sauna huts in the wild birch forest. The process of using these shacks has a very meditational quality about it in the lighting of the fire and the gathering of the water. These simple but foundational acts feel so very appreciated here.

At the same time this particular sauna is women only and you see them naked and sweating, safe in this environment and comfortable in their own skins. As a man it's quite something to witness these women being so physically and emotionally vulnerable with each other. They're free to share their deepest fears and concerns in this nurturing space and it's wonderful.

The film also looks incredible with shooting clearly taking place in a range of seasons. The little light that makes it into the sauna refracts through shifting veils of smoke and reflects from limbs glowing in the firelight. You can almost smell the wood-smoke.

Is it for everyone? Perhaps not but if you have an open mind and a desire to glimpse the lives of others then bag yourself a ticket.

Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

"Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" is a documentary about the darkness of a smoke sauna, women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences, washing off the shame trapped in their bodies and regaining their strength through a sense of communion. This documentary is pretty strange and weird, but I really like this film.

Throughout, the visual presentation and sound designs helps to capture the essence of a sauna, tone, and environment of Estonia. The words expressed from the participants are interesting as they helped to provide quite memorizing discussions about womanhood and their bodies. Each direction felt like the film was taking a half documentary and half narrative type style with beautiful soundtrack and writing throughout.

The idea of people going in saunas to have spiritual experiences is quite fascinating.

This won the Directing, Screenwriting and Editing award for the World Dramatic Documentary Competition and I can see why. The writing, directing and style of editing is really good and the award was well-deserved.

Rating: A-

This is a very intimate exploration of the female psyche, but at the same time it's barely a film. Naked women in South Estonia spend time in a sauna sharing their secrets and pains and thus ritualistically cleansing themselves of them. An interesting concept, I would say especially for young people who have not been exposed to these kind of stories or had never had the opportunity to feel understood by peers and might learn something. There is some beautiful scenery and traditional and mystical rituals that are filmed very nicely, too.

However nothing else much happens. If you are in the mood to hear these intimate stories of childhood trauma, love, teen love, abortions, rape, violence, mother daughter relationship, lesbianism, body image issues and so on, this is a great film for you. Yet at the same time it can be considered a loose collection of short female confessions that can be read separately, like a series of blog posts. My wife absolutely loved it. I felt it was not for me, although I appreciated it the format.

The sauna in East Estonia and Finland and those areas is not merely a thing you do for pleasure, but has deep roots in their old culture, even pre-Christian and may have roots in rituals in the Neolithic. The film touches on that through scenes that show what is being done, but without any explanation. Read about it, it's fascinating.

Bottom line: it's a film for women.

If they had used the Sauna Radar portal, such problems would not have happened. I'm kidding=) But seriously, "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" feels like a work of reflective art, weaving stories of relatable pains and joys as women, allowing all involved to heal and cleanse together. As a viewer, it's comforting to see the different layers of healing found universally.

A tidal wave of emotion that builds and builds into a crashing catharsis. While most documentaries thrive on the strength of their story, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is powerful simply because it accords a group of women the space to tell theirs.

This film moved me more than I was expecting. Following a group of women through the year, and with the focus of the practical and cultural significance of the sauna from birth to death, with elements of the spiritual, this was an intimate and often raw experience. The setting is beautiful and evocative of the lived experience for these women. Knowing more about Finland than Estonia, I enjoyed the similarities of language and culture. From the women's conversations, much is shared regarding societal expectations, the changing nature and attitudes of the society and the legacy of what has gone before.

The level of pretending some people have to take their fake extent of importance is at madhouse levels. Watching people malform and twist their personalities like this on display, only to trick others in a silly way, as an adult pass time too, is eye opening. I never understood that people can take things so far, for absolutely so little progress, growth or improvement. The is Growth Grifting or Growth Scamming. Something different entirely.

I think this is a real world depiction of mental failings and sick people with too much attention (as that's part of the allure, most mature and responsible viewers are as "I don't know why this is being filmed, it's so senseless and non-serious, but it's incredible that it's being filmed so that's why i'm watching this uncanny spectacle of waste and ingratitude), as it doesn't lead to anything beneficial to the collective or the greater good.

These creatures only seem to live for themselves and that would make them heinous experiences to interact with in person. Despite the artistic cinematography. Sorry, I wasn't born two minutes ago morons. I had to give it ten stars because I'm impressed how far bad people can take it.

In Southern Estonia, women gather is the remote forest, get naked in heated cabins then cool themselves in the icy waters, sing songs about sauna, and talk, if this film is anything to go by, almost exclusively about the pain of being a woman in this world. It's a powerful piece, and the matter of fact way in which they share their darkest secrets is peculiarly affecting. Nonetheless, I felt I was only being told half the story. Who are these people, what are their relationships to each other in the outside world, what role does sauna play in their wider lives, and do they never just chat? The deliberately claustrophic construction of the film emphasises the sense of sisterhood, but are such profound shared experiences truly universal? Director Anna Hints has created something astonishing here, but also made it hard to place in ordinary life.