Emma O’Kelly interviews Anna Hints, the director of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Emma O’Kelly, author of Sauna the Power of Deep Heat has shared the same Estonian smoke sauna as film director Anna Hints (though not at the same time). Here Emma interviews Anna about her new film, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 and won Anna a Directing Award. Anna grew up in Võru County, a region famed for its smoke sauna tradition and the film is on tour across the UK.
Emma: How was the idea for the film born?
Anna: In 2015 I went on a silent retreat to a Buddhist monastery in Thailand with my mum. We spent 26 days in silence. When you can’t speak and all the voices are taken away, you realise you have so many voices inside you. It made me question ‘where is my voice? what is my voice?’ and the idea of bringing together female voices in a space came to me.
Being from Võru I guess you grew up with the smoke sauna?
Yes, I was born into the culture of smoke sauna. Where I’m from, it’s part of the family; Traditionally, women would give birth, wash the dead and heal people in the smoke sauna. I grew up with my granny as my mum was studying in Tartu University to become a doctor. Granny was like a healer - she was my spiritual mother.
What is your strongest memory of being in the smoke sauna?
I was 11 and my grandfather died. Granny and my aunties went to the smoke sauna where Granny revealed her husband had cheated on her and lived with another woman for several years leaving her alone with four kids, and all the difficulties of Soviet times. She released all these emotions connected with the betrayal - the pain, frustration, anger and hurt - and we were all there witnessing it. We stayed in the sauna for several hours, and when we eventually came out, I felt Granny had made peace with grandfather.
This experience really got to me. I realised that there is a safe space where all our emotions and experiences can be heard and shared without judgement. It has made me never fear being uncomfortable.
How many saunas did you film in?
We filmed in five different smoke saunas, among them my own smoke sauna and Mooska. Eda Veeroja, (a famous sauna sage) owns Mooska and wanted to do a session in one of her smoke saunas with her Smoke Sauna Sisterhood - a certain group of women of which I’m one.
Is Smoke Sauna Sisterhood an actual group?
It’s more like a group of friends; nothing dogmatic. Anyone can join. You can be somewhere and go along and you can become part of it. And when you do, you meet people for the first time naked and you bond.
How did you find the women who wanted to be filmed?
Word spread quickly as Estonia is very small – only 1.3 million people. Women started to contact me with stories; one day a car pulled into my yard, a woman got out and asked if she could join. I never persuaded anyone. I was just meeting people and I was very transparent about the level of intimacy I was looking for - about how deep we would go. If there was any hesitation, it was a no. There are 25 women in the film. Not all of them speak, some just listen - but that is an important role too.
Did any of them pull out?
No, because instead of making participants sign agreements that would give me final say, I worked for seven years with them on a relationship based on trust. To do it any other way would have felt so wrong; they would have been very self-conscious and it would have ruined everything. When I showed them all the final edits, none of them said no to any of it. It’s beautiful that you can make a bold and intimate work based on trust.
The women’s’ stories are moving and intimate and articulate. Was anything scripted?
No! Nothing is scripted. We had a rule that we weren’t going to discuss in advance what we would talk about. It was ‘let’s see what comes out.’ They were all fresh stories, never recreated. This would have ruined it. When you have things inside you and you’re in the time and space when you’re ready to share, they just come out. Sometimes you don’t even know what the story is inside you. The viewer might listen to a story in the film for 10 minutes, but it has taken four hours in the smoke sauna to surface. There’s a beautiful power in that and it was up to me to capture it.
How did you film it? Even taking photos for my book was challenging, in that dark, small hot space with tons of particles in the air!
It very challenging. We had two lenses – one outside and one we put in the sauna while it was heating up (which takes many hours). It started on the floor, then we moved it to the lower bench, then the upper bench. We had ice packs around the camera, and wore gloves as it would burn our hands. The cinematographer had wet cloths wrapped around her head which were dripping all the time. It was about holding the physical space as well as the emotional space. It was lot of responsibility.
The women’s voices, the whisks, the water and the fire crackling – all the sounds were so evocative you felt like you were on the bench with them.
The smoke sauna is a cinematographic space, but it’s also an aural one, and the women were singing family chants and songs passed down through females born into our smoke sauna culture. The score was a collaboration between my band (electronic-folk trio EETER) and Icelandic composer Edvard Egilsson.
To many, the smoke sauna is the ultimate sauna experience. Do you think there’s something elemental about it which reminds us we are human?
For Estonians, the smoke sauna is not just a building, but a spiritual space that connects us with nature and its cycles. Whatever level you’re at, having a smoke sauna is a big experience. Everyone should go in one at some point in their life. There’s such a deep need for these safe spaces that go beyond gender and culture in which to be vulnerable.
Men and women traditionally visit smoke saunas separately in Estonia. Is this film something that male viewers will appreciate too?
I’m receiving a lot of feedback from men about their experiences and how they need show vulnerability, how they go to sauna and share bullshit, not real shit, you know? They go to the safe space and they avoid vulnerability. Several men have asked me “can you make a film about smoke sauna brotherhood?”, and I say “Well, first you have to create those brotherhoods.” (One of these has been founded in the city of Tartu).*
I just want to end with something my Granny used to say: “We consist of water and when we have trauma this water is frozen inside us and it doesn’t have the potential to flow. The physical heat of the smoke sauna, and the emotional heat too, can warm up those frozen waters.”
*Editorial note: Those interested in the male perspective should watch the 2010 film “Steam of Life” by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is in cinemas from 13 October 2023. Check our Events page for special screenings with Q&A and sauna sessions. For the full list of screenings visit the UK and Ireland distributor Conic Films website at https://www.conic.film/films/smokesauna
Sauna: The Power of Deep Heat is available from 14 September 2023. See the full list of bookstores here https://linktr.ee/saunabook
