A really dismal and depressing documentary film about a crumbling sanatorium in Ukraine. Someone thought it was quirky and charming, but it's grim watching. A sanatorium is a weird thing anyway, a cross between a hotel-resort and a hospital, with lots of unpleasant looking treatments administered by weird overweight therapists using antiquated equipment that looks like it belongs in a steampunk movie. Mud baths, inside wrapped in plastic sheet, and outdoors in the shallow waters of a river estuary that is silting up. The guests are mainly miserable - bereaved, ill, and overweight like the staff - though some of them cheer each other up occasionally. And all this against the background of the war with Russia - one of the guests is a recovering soldier with PTSD, one a bereaved widow, and there are frequent air raid alerts and trips to the shelters.
Watched at Lansdown Hall as part of the Stroud Film Festival.
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