Oscar-Contending Documentary ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ Goes Inside Ancient Place Of Healing “Where You Can Be So Naked, So Vulnerable”

deadline.com:

One of the favorites to make the Oscar documentary feature shortlist this year takes viewers to a remote area of Estonia, within the healing space of the smoke sauna.

It is an ancient tradition in that part of the world, a way of “connecting family and friends to cleanse body and soul inside a place of peace and contemplation.” Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, directed by Anna Hints and produced by Marianne Ostrat, won Best Documentary at the European Film Awards last weekend, and on Tuesday earned a PGA Award nomination for Outstanding Producer of a Documentary Motion Picture.

Hints shot the film across different seasons, in winter and summer, with a group of women taking part in the smoke sauna ritual: hours in the hot space, naked in the semi-darkness, releasing physical and emotional toxins.

Hints traces her roots to the Southeast Estonian culture of Võromaa and Setomaa and first experienced the transformative power of the smoke sauna as a child, with her grandmother. “It was this kind of vibration, a totality, like cathartic experience to me,” she recalls, discovering it as a space where people could reveal deeply personal stories, shedding feelings of shame pent up within the body. “It was an initiation for me to these kind of stories and that wow, on this Earth there is this a safe space where absolutely all your experiences and all your emotions can be shared, can be heard without judgment — that this is possible, because often in society it seems like it’s not possible, but then there is this space where you can be so naked, so vulnerable.” “And this nakedness is nothing sexual,” she adds. “So you’re naked from your body but also your soul and you don’t need to be afraid that you can share in a safe space with people