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

Dir: Gar O’Rourke. Ireland/Ukraine. 2025. 90 mins

Hunkered on a stretch of scrubland just outside of Odesa in southern Ukraine, near an estuary famed for its health-giving black mud, the Kuyalnik Sanatorium is a remnant from the past. The treatments, like the 1970s architecture and, one suspects, many of the clientele, have barely changed in the 50-plus years since the Soviet-era facility was built. Even with the war raging nearby, the staff (and the few guests and patients who remain) doggedly embrace the down-at-heel continuity of the institution, upholding its somewhat battered reputation as a place of healing. Shot over a summer season at the sanatorium, Gar O’Rourke’s feature documentary debut is a strikingly cinematic, affectionately droll study of Ukrainian resilience in the face of war.

A title of considerable interest for distributors 

The film, which premieres in the DOX competition at CPH:DOX, is the result of Irish director O’Rourke’s ongoing fascination with Ukraine and Ukrainian attitudes towards health. His first short film, Kachalka (2019), was about Kyiv’s open-air Kachalka gym, described as ’the world’s most hardcore gym’. Sanatorium, which will also screen as a pre-opening film at Visions du Reel, deftly strikes a balance between ongoing interest in Ukraine as a subject and combat story fatigue. The war is ever-present but, as with Kateryna Gornostai’s affecting Berlin competition title Timestamp, the emphasis is on Ukrainian people stoically getting on with life. The winning combination of handsome, widescreen cinematography, colourful characters and wry humour should make this a title of considerable interest for distributors.

Of the characters, it’s the immense building manager Dmitriy who makes the biggest impact – in every sense. A tank of man who looks like he wrestles bears in his spare time, he has a plus-sized belly laugh to match his plus-sized belly. The film is punctuated by shots of Dmitriy lumbering through the corridors and bellowing abuse at underlings; Dmitriy thunderously bouncing jokes off his colleagues; Dmitriy, unexpectedly graceful at the close of the summer season as he floats, alone, in the therapy pool under its brutalist vaulted roof. The film is predominantly observational in approach, but O’Rourke includes interview audio with some of the characters. Dmitriy, who grew up locally, remembers the sanatorium as a constant in his life and, decades before, as a buzzy venue with a disco full of girls.

The disco remains, organised by bubbly hostess Olena, who likens her job to being a stewardess on a crashing plane, but the average age of the punters has risen considerably. This is a disappointment for Natalia, who is aiming to marry off her bachelor 40-something son Andriy. To this end, she encourages him to scan the lake shore and horizon for suitable women with his monocular. Other guests include a wife hoping that the famous mud will solve her fertility issues; a widow dealing with the grief of losing her husband to the war with Russia; and a soldier who is recuperating from injuries sustained on the frontline.

And while Kuyalnik, with its sun-kissed, tawny light, arcane equipment and endless, empty corridors, seems a world away from the fighting, there are signs of war everywhere: in the lazy plumes of smoke on the horizon as the patients smear themselves in lake sediment; in the rumours of airstrikes on nearby Odesa; in the manly tears shed as the national anthem is sung.

The quality of the craft is high throughout, but Denys Melnyk’s cinematography is a stand out. With its colour palette of institutional mint greens and livid pinks, plus the pleasing symmetrical framing, there’s a hint of Wes Anderson in the film’s look. Melnyk’s use of leisurely locked shots, punctuated with occasional slow, deliberate zooms, captures the rhythms of life in this battered but still imposing architectural statement. Elsewhere, witty music choices, which range from jaunty Ukrainian vintage pop, to choral religious compositions and George Michael’s ’Careless Whisper’, emphasise the sense of dislocation in this concrete time capsule from a past era.