‘Sanatorium’ review: Striking portrait of Odesa’s Soviet-era health facility

Dir: Gar O’Rourke. Eire/Ukraine. 2025. 90 minutes

Hunkered on a stretch of scrubland simply outdoors of Odesa in southern Ukraine, close to an estuary famed for its health-giving black mud, the Kuyalnik Sanatorium is a remnant from the previous. The remedies, just like the Seventies structure and, one suspects, lots of the clientele, have barely modified within the 50-plus years because the Soviet-era facility was constructed. Even with the warfare raging close by, the workers (and the few friends and sufferers who stay) doggedly embrace the down-at-heel continuity of the establishment, upholding its considerably battered popularity as a spot of therapeutic. Shot over a summer season season on the sanatorium, Gar O’Rourke’s function documentary debut is a strikingly cinematic, affectionately droll examine of Ukrainian resilience within the face of warfare.

A title of appreciable curiosity for distributors 

The movie, which premieres within the DOX competitors at CPH:DOX, is the results of Irish director O’Rourke’s ongoing fascination with Ukraine and Ukrainian attitudes in direction of well being. His first quick movie, Kachalka (2019), was about Kyiv’s open-air Kachalka health club, described as ’the world’s most hardcore health club’. Sanatorium, which may even display screen as a pre-opening movie at Visions du Reel, deftly strikes a steadiness between ongoing curiosity in Ukraine as a topic and fight story fatigue. The warfare is ever-present however, as with Kateryna Gornostai’s affecting Berlin competitors title Timestamp, the emphasis is on Ukrainian individuals stoically getting on with life. The profitable mixture of good-looking, widescreen cinematography, vibrant characters and wry humour ought to make this a title of appreciable curiosity for distributors.

Of the characters, it’s the immense constructing supervisor Dmitriy who makes the most important affect – in each sense. A tank of man who appears to be like like he wrestles bears in his spare time, he has a plus-sized stomach giggle to match his plus-sized stomach. The movie is punctuated by pictures of Dmitriy lumbering by means of the corridors and bellowing abuse at underlings; Dmitriy thunderously bouncing jokes off his colleagues; Dmitriy, unexpectedly swish on the shut of the summer season season as he floats, alone, within the remedy pool below its brutalist vaulted roof. The movie is predominantly observational in strategy, however O’Rourke consists of interview audio with a few of the characters. Dmitriy, who grew up domestically, remembers the sanatorium as a continuing in his life and, many years earlier than, as a buzzy venue with a disco full of women.

The disco stays, organised by bubbly hostess Olena, who likens her job to being a stewardess on a crashing aircraft, however the common age of the punters has risen significantly. It is a disappointment for Natalia, who’s aiming to marry off her bachelor 40-something son Andriy. To this finish, she encourages him to scan the lake shore and horizon for appropriate ladies along with his monocular. Different friends embrace a spouse hoping that the well-known mud will clear up her fertility points; a widow coping with the grief of dropping her husband to the warfare with Russia; and a soldier who’s recuperating from accidents sustained on the frontline.

And whereas Kuyalnik, with its sun-kissed, tawny mild, arcane gear and countless, empty corridors, appears a world away from the preventing, there are indicators of warfare in every single place: within the lazy plumes of smoke on the horizon because the sufferers smear themselves in lake sediment; within the rumours of airstrikes on close by Odesa; within the manly tears shed because the nationwide anthem is sung.

The standard of the craft is excessive all through, however Denys Melnyk’s cinematography is a stand out. With its color palette of institutional mint greens and furious pinks, plus the pleasing symmetrical framing, there’s a touch of Wes Anderson within the movie’s look. Melnyk’s use of leisurely locked pictures, punctuated with occasional sluggish, deliberate zooms, captures the rhythms of life on this battered however nonetheless imposing architectural assertion. Elsewhere, witty music decisions, which vary from jaunty Ukrainian classic pop, to choral spiritual compositions and George Michael’s ’Careless Whisper’, emphasise the sense of dislocation on this concrete time capsule from a previous period.