“Grow strong, grow powerful” indicates a haunting dirge about the image of a naked woman breastfeeding her daughter in a smoke-filled sauna.
Thus it starts with this timeless image, which nudity imposes, Smoke Sauna - The secrets of the sisterhood, in Italian cinemas only on 5, 6 and 7 February 2024 with Wanted Cinema in the original version with subtitles, after winning the Sundance Film Festival 2023 and being awarded Best European Documentary at the EFA in the same year.
A documentary, directed by Estonian director Anna Hints in her debut with a feature film, which takes you into the most intimate, universal soul of the female world, in which the secret of procreation combined with that of acceptance, that of life and strength they mix harmoniously.
What ever happens in this little wooden house in the snow?
In this traditional Estonian "smoke sauna" in Võru County?
A mystical and ancient practice is on stage which since 2020 has been included in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, made of heat, sweat, salt scrubs, grass whips, ice cream baths, but above all of stories, confidences.
In short, in this wooden house the women tell their stories, perhaps say the same things that they have said a thousand other times in all times and in all cultures of the world.
There are those who say "when I was young they told me I was ugly";
who remembers a miscarriage and what it feels like when a child inside you dies;
those who share with the women in the sauna a violence they suffered as a teenager at the hands of an old man and, finally, those who remember the two apples that she put on her chest to show a breast that never emerged.
And then an ecstatic song with the cry of "salt salt protect me from evil, water water takes the pain away" and again "all the pain comes out with sweat, all fear comes out with sweat".
"At the age of eleven my grandfather died and together with my grandmother, my aunt and my niece we went to a smoke sauna. There, my grandmother shared with us the fact that her husband had cheated on her. My grandmother vented her pain and her anger, she made peace with my grandfather and the next day she was able to bury him in peace. It was then that I understood that this sauna not only serves to cleanse the body, but also the soul" said the director in an interview with Cineuropa.
And again Anna Hints: "The concrete idea came to me in 2015, when in a Buddhist monastery I participated in a ritual that required silence together with my mother, with whom I have always had a turbulent relationship. Only then did I feel the the importance of finally sharing experiences with her.
In the protective darkness of the smoke sauna,
all emotions can come out and no experience is too hard or too embarrassing;
there every voice has the right to express itself."
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