
Within the sheltered confines of a traditional smoke sauna deep in an Estonian forest, groups of women gather to cleanse themselves in both body and soul. On and off through the seasons, this intimate locale becomes a space for female togetherness, giving the women room not just to indulge in traditional sauna-based rituals (included on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list), but also to share intensely personal hurts and longings, joys and pains. In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, a hotbox becomes a place of healing. A deserving winner of the directing award in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary category, filmmaker Anna Hints boldly combines an intimate non-fiction approach with sensuous lyrical expressionism, balancing the disarming frankness of her subjects’ conversations with ravishing, lushly photographed textures of fire, wood, steam, smoke, and flesh. Less an act of individual portraiture than a kind of collective diary, or even an exorcism of experience, the film is a moving tribute to female resilience and community.
Estonia/France/Iceland
2023
Spectrum
In Estonian, Seto and Võro with English subtitles
Discussions of Sexual Violence, Sexual Discrimination
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Marianne Ostrat
Screenwriter
Anna Hints
Cinematography
Ants Tammik
Editor
Hendrik Mägar, Tushar Prakash, Qutaiba Barhamji, Martin Männik, Anna Hints
Director

Anna Hints
Anna Hints is an Estonian film director with a background in contemporary art and experimental folk music. Anna has deep roots in the distinct culture of South Estonia. As an active dumpster diver, Anna’s short documentary For Tomorrow Paradise Arrives initiated public discussion and growth of new grassroot movements against food waste in Estonia. Anna’s first feature length film Smoke Sauna Sisterhood premiered at the Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary Competition in January 2023 and received the Directing Award.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Graduate
In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).
blur: To the End
Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.
Midnight Cowboy
Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman are street hustlers on different ends of the innocence / experience spectrum who establish something more than a business partnership in the seedy world of late 60s New York City in John Schlesinger's New Hollywood classic.
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
The Headless Woman
The pictures tell the story -- and you better not blink -- when Veronica (the superb Maria Onetto) hits something on the road home. But what? She is too traumatized, or panic-stricken, to go back and look, and her fears are too terrible to acknowledge.