Cannes 2024 (Critics’ Week): Sauna Day (by Anna Hints & Tushar Prakash) | Review

Following the resounding success of her captivating debut feature documentary, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023), which won the Best Directing Award in the documentary section at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and recently received the Best European Documentary Award at the latest European Film Awards, Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints, with whom we had the pleasure of speaking during the presentation of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood at the Trieste Film Festival 2024, delights us by arriving on the Croisette with a new film. This film is co-directed with New Delhi-born Tushar Prakash, who was the editor of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood.

Their collaboration, Sauna Day (original title: Sannapäiv), is a 13-minute fiction short, presented in a special screening at the 63rd Critics’ Week. The film immerses the viewer in the confined intimacy of a traditional Estonian sauna, where half a dozen male bodies sit side by side as the temperature steadily rises. With almost no dialogue, these men of all ages face the camera, making the audience feel as if they are present in the sauna. The sound work significantly enhances the viewer’s immersion in this stifling and oppressive environment. The humidity, the dampness, and the heat seem palpable. Sweat beads on bodies under pressure, on bodies consenting to a radical physical experience imagined to be healing for the soul.

Soon, only two men remain in the sauna, determined to see the experience through to the end. One of them grabs a bundle of moistened dry herbs to beat the body of his companion, who is lying on his stomach. The camera captures the sequence of these repetitive and brutal movements with precision and care. In a staging reminiscent of grand classical paintings, the camera closely observes the harsh and violent choreography of two bodies subjected to a rigorous process. Seeing these faces, both contorted by pain and exuding the serenity of those who understand that this pain is a remedy, the viewer can easily project themselves into the situation and think of the many times they would like to shed their burdens as radically.

Then, in a shot reminiscent of the final stage of a rite, the two bodies, having exited the sauna, venture into tall grass before submerging themselves in the waters of a lake. Relieved and soothed, the two men finally enjoy the serenity resulting from the expiation they have just endured. This scene metaphorically represents that these bodies have undergone a process, a transformation both desired and beneficial.

In the film’s final scene, the two men put their clothes back on, exchanging a few mundane words that make no mention of the experience they just shared and that the viewer has just witnessed. This is a stark way to show how this ritual fits into the everyday life of these men.

By focusing on bodies rather than individuals, whose names and backstories we do not know, the filmmakers facilitate identification with a process whose outcome any viewer can imagine. With grace, modesty, and skill, Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash orchestrate the meeting of the viewer’s extraordinary experience with the ordinary reality of the subjects they film. Sauna Day presents a cathartic ritual, mundane for those who practice it, and captivating for those discovering the virtues of a process that subjects bodies to suffering for the sake of soothing the soul.

Sauna Day is an Estonia-based Stellar Film production. International sales are handled by renowned short film distributor Salaud Morisset.

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