Cinema Femme Shorts Film Festival 2024, Film reviews

Cinema Femme Shorts Film Festival 2024: Smoke Sauna Sisterhood Review

Leave a comment

The Cinema Femme Shorts Film Festival highlights captivating films in independent cinema. The festival provides a mixture of short films, feature films, and workshops. It offers its audience the chance to feel cinematic moments that feel incredibly real. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a film that made me ask myself why there are more realistic movies like this. Writer and director Anna Hints takes her audience on an audacious journey into the unknown in the mountains of Estonia.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood has a faded form of cinematography that blends well with the winter setting throughout the film. The title is catchy and may leave some to assume that the film is horror themed. The lighting and darkness also make the film feel like it could belong in that genre. However, it is a documentary in which reality and candid discussions occur in a place with no boundaries. As the title indicates, the women are socializing in a sauna. Their deep conversations dive into aspects of life that are mesmerizing thanks to a brilliant director who helps reveals the truth.

The ladies in the film are all real people and play themselves. Their names are Kadil Kivilo, Maria Meresaar, Elsa Saks, Marianne Liiv, and others. They are European women who find their sacred place of peace and meaning in their sauna. In that sauna, all kinds of topics come up ranging from ageism to disconnect to hardship to loneliness. The sauna is their own personal club where they all feel heard with heart.

There are lots of deep emotions and spellbinding factors in the stories that weave together in powerful ways. There is a quote that describes the film’s theme by saying.  “Smoke Sauna is a sacred place where you can cleanse yourself.” There is lots of cleansing in Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. My mind felt “cleansed” after the touching experience I had with this movie. It truly made me think about reality in a new light. Viewers like me may often feel that we cannot share our inner most  thoughts, struggles or challenges with others when in fact, we can. The women in the film have bonds as close as sisters. They all find themselves inspired…in the light and the dark. This documentary is a moving and poetic adventure where self-acceptance is the enduring message.

Women coming out of their shells is the tactic used to create this film’s cinematic beauty. Truth and openness are featured and celebrated in Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. The secluded natural setting is one of divine beauty where the essence of solitude reigns. Deeper stories lead to more topics with no filter. The writing keeps supporting the vibe of connectedness. Their loving environment creates a blissful feeling that is soothing. The bond between the ladies is loyal and loving and the odyssey of thoughts they share makes the audience feel present. Connectivity, sexuality, and personal boundaries are all exploredin Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. Four stars for this glorious, one-of-a-kind film.

Film reviews

Nowhere Special Review

Leave a comment

Fatherhood is one of resemblance with a big heart in Nowhere Special. Written and directed by Uberto Pasolini, this one of the most heartbreaking and thorough depictions of reality hitting a harsh plateau. A film dealing with the issue of how health failures impact others. With an opening shot of a day-to-day setting around Northern Ireland, there is that subtle undertone of sorrowfulness. A father with a health condition that will change his world and daily life forever. Nowhere Special is about finding the right outlet for someone who is impacted after the day he dies.

The father with the fatal health problem is John (played by James Norton), and he is a window cleaner. He is a single father to his son Michael (played by Daniel Lamont). John shows enormous love for Michael, as he reads to him, cleans him up, and plays with him all the time he possibly can. John though, is at a point where he only has a brief time to live. He speaks with other families and uses social services to see what options there are for Michael once he dies. Michael’s mother left them both. With Michael already growing up without a mother, he does not want Michael to know much about the situation. Michael is too young to understand the sense of this unnerving matter.

The emphasis on John spending time with his son Michael exemplifies the fact that there may not be many happy days left—that is why John and Michael are quiet all the time. With John only having so little time to live, he is determined to find a home that is a good fit for Michael. The golden and cheerful moments with John and Michael deliver a sense of their last moments of happiness together.  John finds himself concerned about how Michael will feel mentally once he is able to understand the depressing and uncontrollable scenario. John works with Shona (played by Eileen O’Higgins), a social services worker with a case set up for John regarding what happens to Michael after he passes. The moving parts of the legalities and case structure are what also feeds the emotions in Nowhere Special. 

Each moment John and Michael share is like a chapter in Nowhere Special. A chapter in life of feeling fulfilled before the worst happens. The film is straightforward in forming layers where the present matters. The focus is on empathy and hope that a loved son will have a family once his father is gone. A surreal moment and realistic portrait of this aspect is when John and Michael are in the park. There is a scene where Michael finds a beetle under a tree, but the beetle is dead. The moment of Michael and the beetle is one where John sheds some light their own situation, as he tells him, “It’s just not there”. A moment of truth that Michael will come to understand at one point in his life. The portrayal of optimism is one of a light waiting to be found in the aftermath that will happen one day.

How much does John truly hurt? How will John be ready for the inevitable? Nowhere Special fuels the thinking for its audience audaciously. It leads them down a sad road. The life for Michael after John is gone remaining unclear is where Nowhere Specialhits its breaking point. John cannot die knowing his son does not have a safe and comforting place after his death. The legal status, the considerations, and John’s life having shorter and shorter days throw the film into a spiral. It is invigorating in the curiosity it develops to know what comes next.

Nowhere Special creates the road block of patience in the context of complexity. It is a sensitive portrait of purpose. My empathy for John brought up a lot mixed feelings for me—he has joyful days and sad days with Michael and all of them bring a certain pain with them. There is a box of memories that comes around in Nowhere Special…the symbolism of love and compassion touches hearts deeply.  Nowhere Special delivers a mark of empathy with disconnect, meaning John will always love Michael, but due to the unforeseen circumstances, he must let Michael go knowing someone will love him like his father did. Three-and-a-half out of four stars for Nowhere Special.

Film reviews

Challengers Review

1 Comment

This is one of the most enticing films directed by Luca Guadagnino that I have ever seen. Challengers is a film whichtests tensions and favoritism to the absolute maximum. Tennis and relationships are explored hand in hand throughout the film.  The story centers around Zendaya, she is one of the main competitors. The film focuses on competition for both a tennis championship and the attention of Zendaya. Challengers does not only push itself in terms of its mental suspense, but it is also remains on point in having its audience think about the rules of tennis and what it takes to make it to the big leagues. With its two male stars, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, the heat is truly on in Challengers.

The film begins in 2019. Art Donaldson (played by Faist) is a successful tennis player in a loving relationship with Tashi Donaldson (played by Zendaya). They live a life of success, commercialism, and many rankings in tennis championships. His competitor (also a long-term friend on odd terms) is Patrick Zweig (played by Josh O’Connor). Zweig is one who keeps hitting or missing in tennis competitions. He keeps finding himself in financial despair and frustration. They are all connected though, as the film jumps to the era before the hot mess began. Art and Patrick were good friends, and Tashi was one they were obsessed with. They all became very close to the point where they were all madly in love with each other. However, it is clear that the distraction and attention for Tashi also is the key to their performance on the court. Both have always had goals and ambitions to impress Tashi. With all of that, the lines get blurred for success on the court for Art and Patrick.

The film goes into a pattern where the younger days were ones of success and young love between all three individuals. As the film progresses, the competition of tennis only gets more complex and mentally challenging, because both Art and Patrick want to be great. On top of that, they all want to be in one fulfilling and loving relationship with Tashi. Tashi had gone pro but sustained an injury and has limitations. It fueled Art and Patrick to be competitive with each other in the rankings and wins throughout their tennis career. Guadagnino focuses in-depth on their clear aggravations, mentality, egos and persistence. Challengers is a daring sportsmanship experience that will stress its audience to the max with its adrenaline.

With all the turmoil and detrimental thinking among the three characters, carrying from their younger days to their current lives, they build a relationship of confusion where love, tennis, and lust lead to destruction. The film’s continuity and wicked suspense wraps around winning the love of Tashi. This element creates a layer of disconnect. Challengers draws a picture where growth has wins, losses, jealousy and halts in success–all enthralling key points in Challengers.

The relationships and thoughts of the individuals in the film made me start to think of Guadagnino’s masterpiece Call Me by Your Name. Although these are separate types of films when it comes to relationships, there is a layer of writing where his work shines brightly. His directing is one that conveys that his characters are irritated or upset, and it is keen on making surethat audiences know it. Guadagnino’s direction of leading his audience think about soul-searching in Challengers goes into many directions. Who has more faith? Who is a better man for Tashi? Why do these individuals tolerate each other’s nonsense so much?  Challengers has continuous elements of intense anddetrimental stress in its characterizations—the stressors do not stop and make the competitive nature of this film even more mesmerizing.

A boiling and athletic ride of anxiety, this film takes a deep dive into egotistical minds. Tashi is all that matters to Art and Patrick and infidelities that occur go down the path of benefiting one over the other on the tennis court. Challengers has tons of moving parts that will make its audience keep wanting to think thoroughly and precisely. It is a duel for a championship and much more. The question is who is the true champion and the one that loves Tashi the most? Is it Art or Patrick? Find out in Challengers. Four stars.

Treating cinema in many forms of art!