Mud baths and missile threats: Irish documentary captures life in a Ukrainian sanatorium
Gar O’Rourke and a scene from his Odesa-made documentary, Sanatorium.
Galway filmmaker Gar O’Rourke recently learned that his documentary has been selected to represent Ireland for an Oscar run. The Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) has put forward O’Rourke’s powerful film told in the Ukrainian language, as Ireland’s entry for the International Feature Film Category at next spring’s Academy Awards.
follows in the footsteps of Oscar-nominated and Oscar shortlisted to compete with films from around the world for the Oscar. The selection is further proof of Ireland’s strength in depth when it comes to international filmmaking - others selected in the category in previous years include (in Spanish, 2006), (in Arabic, 2019), and (in Arabic, 2024).
“I remember feeling ecstatic,” says O’Rourke on hearing had been selected as Ireland’s Oscar entry. “I honestly didn't know what to say. We put so much work into the film and we really felt proud of what we had done. I feel we live in quite dark times at the moment, and we felt there was something positive about this film. I want to say a massive thanks to IFTA.
“I think it says a lot about us as a country that we have selected a film that is not inherently about Ireland. It's a film made by Irish creatives and people working the Irish Film Industry, outward looking, to say: 'We want to offer a perspective on what's happening in the world'.”
Produced by Venom Films and backed by Screen Ireland, the quirky and moving is set in the Kuyalnik Sanatorium near Odesa, where staff and guests gather for mud baths and other health-based treatments, finding healing and renewal in the shadow of war.
Surprisingly, the idea for making a film about the centre was in motion before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. O’Rourke’s relationship with Ukraine goes back seven years - he first made a documentary short, about an open air gym in Kiev that had a reputation as being the most hardcore in the world.
“I began to become quite curious and fascinated by the Ukrainian attitude towards health and well-being. As an Irish person, I didn't know what a sanatorium was like.”
A week of mud baths, hydro massages, vector massages, salt pool therapies and salt wraps later, and O’Rourke was sold.
“I kind of fell in love with this place, and with the staff who worked there as well. I thought there was a really special film to be made. Back then, the intention was to make a film that very much explored the theme of healing. It was less than a year after my first trip that the Russian invasion happened, and that, of course, would change the lives of everyone in Ukraine, and it still has to this day, and it will in the future."
When the Russians invaded Ukraine, the sanatorium closed its doors. Months into the ongoing conflict, staff decided to reopen the premises and the filmmakers returned, aware that they were now capturing a portrait of human resilience as air-raid sirens loomed.
“Despite being in the middle of the war, the staff felt, in some sense, people might need this sanatorium more than ever,” says the Galway filmmaker.
“I felt this film actually might take on many more layers than what we originally envisioned. It became much more a film about resilience and the power of the human spirit, the power of community. Ordinary people living in extraordinary times.”
The powerful documentary captures the day-to-day life and reality of living in a conflict zone. Odesa is a regular target for Russian missiles and drones. O’Rourke still gets air-raid notifications on his mobile phone and, when we talk, notes there have been three in the area over the past seven hours.
“For Ukrainians, this is part of daily life. If you're a mother with a young child, you might be getting, on average, four or five hours sleep a night. You're down in a bunker, and then you have to bring your kids to school in the morning, and then start your job as well. You don't really have a choice in that situation. You just have to move forward the best way you can.”
The film reveals not only the participants’ sense of stoicism and determination to live their lives, but their sense of humour. “I think humour is something that gives you agency in hardship, where you can have ownership of your own perspective of something,” says O’Rourke. “Many of my Ukrainian friends have a dark sense of humour. I had a friend who told me: ‘Without humour, we wouldn't be able to get through this’.”
focuses on the staff who work at the centre and the clients who come there to find healing in its many various forms. There is a universality in the detail - from the Ukrainian mammy hopeful that her 40-year-old-son will find a nice wife to marry, to the people who come seeking rest, restoration and purpose. That they are trying to do so at a time of conflict gives the film a different complexion. The country’s history speaks to the stoicism of its people, O’Rourke feels.
“Ukraine's traumatic history didn't begin in 2022. It didn't begin in 2014 either with Maidan [popular uprising against pro-Russian president]. It's a history of oppression, a history of bloody conflicts,” he says, adding that Ukrainians were among the highest casualties of WW2. “Before that, you had famines created by the Soviet regime, and millions died. Ukraine has had a very difficult history. There's a stoicism there. There's a tremendous sense of community spirit as well. I think Ukrainians work so well together. They really look out for each other.”
Making a documentary is already a difficult process and doing so in another language brings additional challenges. But it’s a process O’Rourke appears to embrace. In fact, he’s currently in northern Italy filming his next documentary called which explores the topic of over-tourism.
“I'd already made a short documentary in Ukraine before, so I had some experience with not knowing the language and all the fun that comes with that,” says O’Rourke. “Basically the practicalities of that are I work very closely with people who deeply understand and know the culture, because they're from that culture. Within my team, I would have had two or three different people who I could really rely on for not just translation, but also to understand people, and to understand the kind of nuance of people's idiosyncrasies that might be specific to that culture.”
- opens in Irish cinemas on Friday, September 5
