As Irelands entry for next years oscars in documentary filmmaking, Sanatorium has been backed to be a success before it was even released. The documentary tells the story of therapy centre in Odessa, Ukraine; far from Ireland where it is produced but a lot closer in its weather climate. It concerns the individuals going to the retreat, hoping for healing and better wellbeing, or even just an escape from the usual landscape of the war torn country.
This film reminds me a lot of Pavilion 6 (Dević, 2024), they are both set in former Soviet Union countries and use the backdrop of a national emergency to tell their story. Here it sets itself in a vaccine centre during the covid pandemic while the other is a retreat. They both use storytelling and altogether showing people going through their every day life as the glue that holds the films together. They show how the people adapt to the strange environment they have been placed in, but more than this show them carrying on as normal. Human spirit and community is what brings a population through crisis and this is what the films have to offer. It is also how you get a better glimpse into the life of a society in emergency through the ways people adapt in everyday life, rather than just the individuals on the frontline.
You see the turmoil of the war torn country in the film. It is seen in the background of the retreat where black smoke fills the skies, yet the residents act as if it isn’t there. Other moments include the residents retreating to the bunker when the sirens are heard, this itself isn’t followed by a mass panic to escape but what seems to now part of every day life. What shocks and interests the audience here isn’t the conditions they live in or the situation they find themselves in, but how this new brutality for Ukrainian citizens is now incorporated in every day life for them.