Yahoo News Sundance Winner Anna Hints Readies for ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ Oscar Campaign, Encourages Viewers to Stop Apologizing for Their Tears
“Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” director Anna Hints keeps on bewitching her audience. Literally.
“Maybe you are not wrong. Maybe it is witchcraft,” she says.
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“There is this word in Estonian, nõid. It means healer, shaman, which is what my grandmother used to be. Words come to you and you heal through them. Coming from Estonian Indigenous culture, Võro, this connection with the spiritual world feels very natural to me. Artists are like witches.”
Her film – already lauded at Sundance, where Hints was awarded for directing – was recently shown at Zurich. Another one in a long life of festivals that fell for its portrayal of women sweating out toxins and inner demons, and sharing the most intimate stories.
“Everyone kept telling me that Swiss viewers are passive, but they all sang with me. I always do that ‘thank you’ song, wherever I go with the film,” she notes.
“I am surprised, happy and humbled by what I see. Coming from a very small country, it proves that something local can turn into something universal. I think it has opened up many Estonian filmmakers’ eyes.”
Learning to listen to her own voice as a director has been “a journey,” she confesses. It also hasn’t been easy.
“When I first applied for state funding, I was denied it. According to the committee, it didn’t make sense: ‘It’s a small room, it’s dark and there are all these women.’ Someone else added: ‘I haven’t seen anything like this before.’ I went: ‘But it’s a good thing!’,” she laughs.
Recalling that later, at Sundance, the jurors praised her for the exact same things.
“It proves that when a film can be easily described on a piece of paper, it doesn’t mean you should make it. The way filmmaking is taught can be so rigid, but I am trying to be intuitive. I am trying to capture something intangible and perhaps people can feel that? My goal was to invite them to this magical, sacred space, where every emotion is allowed.”
But the smoke sauna tradition is bigger than the hot building she decided to shoot in.
“It’s connected to the concept we call vägi: it’s this life energy that’s everywhere. Some things have more vägi, some less and when it leaves us, we become väeti. We are dead. And I am looking for life in art,” explains Hints.
“I used to study folklore and in the past, you always had someone coming in from the outside, looking at it from this colonial mindset. I think it’s stronger when you come from the same culture and share your experience with others.”
She wasn’t trying to persuade any of her protagonists to participate in the film. But to create a sense of vulnerability on set, she had to be vulnerable as well.
“I was very honest about the level of intimacy I was looking for and if someone was hesitating, it was a no. I started the film before #MeToo movement, then the society started to change and some of these women contacted me again. But I never wanted to do anything against their will,” she says.
“I didn’t ask them to sign a release form. My producer, Marianne Ostrat, really supported my vision. We didn’t sign anything until we were in post-production. When we talk about the ways things are done, we don’t have to follow old examples set by film schools or male directors. We can create our own rituals.”
France’s Juliette Cazanave, Iceland’s Hlín Jóhannesdóttir and Estonia’s Eero Talvistu co-produce.
Rituals are on Hints’ mind also now. With Estonia selecting “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” as its Best International Feature Film submission, she is readying for the Oscar campaign.
“There is so much money involved, so much PR and marketing, and I don’t want to lose myself in all these other voices. I need everyday rituals to stay connected to my voice,” she adds.
“The moment you start doing something for a festival or an award, something precious gets lost. Whenever I am traveling, I find a tree and keep going there. An oak is not jealous of a birch, nature is not doing that, so why are we?! Thinking about that helps me go through the award season.”
With Trigon-film distributing the film in Switzerland and Autlook Filmsales racking up sales ever since its premiere, Hints keeps on connecting with viewers all over the world.
“The sisterhood continues,” she says.
“I realized that people need these kinds of spaces. I’ve met one Japanese woman who has seen the film six times. She doesn’t have that experience of being vulnerable with her family, let alone being naked together. She has been using it to connect with her own story.”
Although this kind of intimacy “can be uncomfortable,” admits Hints, she is not scared of it.
“Because my roots are in the smoke sauna tradition, I am not afraid of uncomfortable feelings. I have also been excluded from life, I used to suffer from severe social anxiety. Now, because I did my own healing, I want to be there for others.”
And not just for women.
“Men have cried in my arms too. Then they apologize – so many people do. Can we please stop apologizing for our tears? Let them flow.”
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