Cannes diary: Short film 'Sauna Day' by Hints and Prakash – elegiac beauty

For Estonians and the Estonian film industry, the most significant moment of the sixth day of the festival was undoubtedly the premiere of "Sauna Day," directed by Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash, writes film critic and journalist Tristan Priimägi.
What makes "Sauna Day" ("Sannapäiv") strong is its economy. All the excess was removed layer by layer until only the most important remained. As Hints herself said in an interview with the culture magazine Sirp, the aim was to "cut a much longer piece of filmed footage into a poem inside."
The aim is clear, and performance is close to ideal. The silence is deafeningly eloquent, and the unspoken words echo clearly in your ears even after the film.
From an aesthetic perspective, while "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" presented itself as a cinematic experience that clearly desexualizes the body, the reality here is quite different. The act of two men is unmistakably erotic; the camera searches for sensuality on the surface of their bodies and frames spaces between objects, leading the mind to what's beyond the edge of the frame.
The window adds an elegiac beauty to the setting: outside the safe confines of the sauna, where you can be naked together and enjoy it, the masquerade of everyday life continues, and you have to play a role in society.
here are shots that are comparable to those in "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood," but the two films, which are set in a sauna, are very different. The two films work nicely together without affecting each other.
It's hard for a short format to have the same impact as a feature-length film. It doesn't matter how much short filmmakers themselves claim the opposite. Here, however, the original concept has been realized very clearly and with a firm hand. A strong contender for the best Estonian film of the year. And also an incredibly cool event! Hopefully it won't be 17 years, as it was after Kadri Kõusaar's screening of "Magnus," until the next time the Estonian production is shown in the Un Certain Regard program, a section of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.

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Editor: Kristina Kersa