Dir:
Anna Hints

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

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Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
2023
// 89 min
The first documentary by an Estonian director to compete and win at Sundance, SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD is a deeply moving, intimate and breathtaking approach to issues of trauma, healing, and community. Filmed almost as if a Vermeer or Rembrandt painting, the camera is never intrusive, never mechanical. Rather, the images move as the smoke – lingering, wafting, suspended briefly before disappearing and reappearing. With an authentic voice and authority born of their own heritage, filmmaker Anna Hints has created a transformative experience of being human within a female body, showing women “as they are” with great emotional veracity and deep empathy.

Awards & Recognition

🍅 98% Certified Fresh
Premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Directing Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. It later won Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards and Best Cinematography at the 2023 International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards. The film was Estonia's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, earning widespread acclaim for its storytelling and artistry.
“It’s a gorgeously captured space carved out away from the world of men, and Hints’s film renders it with lyrical intensity” - Vox