Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a 2023 Estonian documentary by film maker Anna Hints that unfolds within the intimate, mist-shrouded world of a traditional smoke sauna deep in the forests of southern Estonia. The film gathers a group of women who come together to bathe, sweat, and share their most personal stories — of love, loss, trauma, and resilience — in an atmosphere of raw honesty and mutual care.
Through the rising steam and flickering candlelight, the sauna becomes a sacred space where shame dissolves and solidarity takes shape. Shot with remarkable tenderness and poetic stillness, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is both a celebration of female connection and a meditation on the healing power of vulnerability, nature, and shared ritual.
It won the Directing Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and has been widely praised for its visual beauty and emotional depth — a quietly powerful testament to the strength that emerges when women come together in truth and warmth.
This is an astonishing film. At times I found it difficult to watch. Some of the subjects the ladies discuss are deeply personal and private.
The film is subtitled in English, I wish I understood Estonian, I get the feeling something is lost in translation.
The film is available in various places to stream, here in the UK ‘Film 4’ has if for free.