Filmimuuseum
TIFS - Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
On May 11th, Anna Hints' award-winning documentary film "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" will be screened at the Film Museum’s Tallinn International Film Society film club (TIFS). The film has achieved unprecedented success worldwide with its intimate and moving stories told in a smoke sauna.
With TIFS cinema tickets, attendees can gain FREE access to the exhibition "My Free Country" at the Estonian History Museum's Maarjamäe Castle, providing a deeper exploration of the themes depicted in the films.
Tristan Priimägi, the curator of TIFS film program, award-winning film critic, and author of the book "101 Estonian Films," has written about the film in the following way:
A group of women gathers in a small sauna in southern Estonia to cleanse their bodies and souls. Together with sweat, they expel pain – traumas of the past and unresolved dramas.
The sauna has always held a special place in Estonian culture. Perhaps it equated to something like purgatory for Christians, where sins were burned away. The sauna is like an autonomous space between this world and some other perceptual level. This feeling is emphasized by smoke, a frequent tool of rituals connecting the worldly and "otherworldly" realms in a vague haze. And indeed, one can sense religious ecstasy in whisking; flagellation or self-flagellation.
These sisters here present themselves completely naked on screen and usher Estonian cinema into a new era in many ways. The creators emphasize that despite the nudity, bodies in this film are not sexualized. Rather, they serve as carriers and expressions of a spiritual force that has allowed them to endure difficulties and still emerge as winners.
"Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" is a female-authored film about women telling women's stories. It is also an Estonian author's film about Estonia, specifically southern Estonia and even more precisely, Old Võrumaa, whose smoke sauna traditions were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014. And hopefully, this marks the beginning of a new era for Estonian cinema in the sense that finally our own authors can tell our stories without adapting them to anyone's taste, yet in a way that we are heard. At least the smoke sauna sisters have been heard: as evidenced by the Sundance award for best director in the international documentary category or Estonia's first-ever European Film Academy award, the Best European Documentary in 2023.
The film will be screened with Estonian and English subtitles.
Age restriction: K-14
Runtime: 1h 29 min.
With TIFS cinema tickets, attendees can gain FREE access to the exhibition "My Free Country" at the Estonian History Museum's Maarjamäe Castle, providing a deeper exploration of the themes depicted in the films.
Tristan Priimägi, the curator of TIFS film program, award-winning film critic, and author of the book "101 Estonian Films," has written about the film in the following way:
A group of women gathers in a small sauna in southern Estonia to cleanse their bodies and souls. Together with sweat, they expel pain – traumas of the past and unresolved dramas.
The sauna has always held a special place in Estonian culture. Perhaps it equated to something like purgatory for Christians, where sins were burned away. The sauna is like an autonomous space between this world and some other perceptual level. This feeling is emphasized by smoke, a frequent tool of rituals connecting the worldly and "otherworldly" realms in a vague haze. And indeed, one can sense religious ecstasy in whisking; flagellation or self-flagellation.
These sisters here present themselves completely naked on screen and usher Estonian cinema into a new era in many ways. The creators emphasize that despite the nudity, bodies in this film are not sexualized. Rather, they serve as carriers and expressions of a spiritual force that has allowed them to endure difficulties and still emerge as winners.
"Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" is a female-authored film about women telling women's stories. It is also an Estonian author's film about Estonia, specifically southern Estonia and even more precisely, Old Võrumaa, whose smoke sauna traditions were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014. And hopefully, this marks the beginning of a new era for Estonian cinema in the sense that finally our own authors can tell our stories without adapting them to anyone's taste, yet in a way that we are heard. At least the smoke sauna sisters have been heard: as evidenced by the Sundance award for best director in the international documentary category or Estonia's first-ever European Film Academy award, the Best European Documentary in 2023.
The film will be screened with Estonian and English subtitles.
Age restriction: K-14
Runtime: 1h 29 min.
- Tickets 8/6 €. Tickets here!