Sanatorium Review (CPH:DOX 2025)

Seldom do we encounter a film (let alone documentary) coming from Ukraine that does not directly and urgently address the dreadful conditions and implications of the ongoing war. Director Gar O’Rourke takes a different route in depicting one of the many realities affecting the country today.

‘Sanatorium’ seems like a visit to a dystopian, post-futuristic place, where bodies visit to retreat, vacay, and heal. Mud baths, electro-therapies, and hydro-massages are among the offers of Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a curing resort benefiting from the wonders of the Black Sea and the leftover imaginative equipment of the Soviet Union.

Located in Odessa, a city in southern Ukraine that has been intermittently struck by airstrikes since 2022, Kuyalnik continues to operate by any means possible. Repairs to the rooftops or the pools are organized by the janitor—a man who holds a globe for a belly and a lifetime of experience with the facilities and particularities of the accommodation on his shoulders—while social activities and entertainment are curated, produced, and performed by a tiny woman with a booming voice and an even louder spirit. In ‘Sanatorium,’ the sound of shelling feels like a routine check-up, and while war is present, it is met with quiet resignation by the dramatically reduced number of visitors. Kuyalnik Sanatorium is vast and majestic, but vacant. Besides the few guests, most of whom are solitary vacationers who seek recovery, rejuvenation, or even fertility.

These are the characters O’Rourke follows with his gentle camera while roaming the chambers of the Sanatorium. He is definitely flirting with the environment, undeniably cinematic, offering just so much to look at with the right angle and the right lenses. Yet, he does something more. Without imposing an excessive narrative, he quietly listens and observes them during doctor visits, karaoke events, or machine treatments. Amid the somewhat obsolete aesthetics of the location, frozen as if in the 1970s, there are some extraordinary medical devices that make no sense at all, but the guests use them voraciously. And while the whole 90 minutes of the documentary presents itself as pertinent to a sci-fi trailer, by the end, there is a deafening end to the thread that rebounds back to the current state of a society at unease—a society at war. These visitors, suffering from loss or defeat, form a picture of exhausted bodies longing for repair. They are bodies in between realities, waiting for regeneration in the most human sense of the word.