"The Ukrainian spirit, it's really made of granite. Stoic, immensely strong, quietly courageous in their way, exceptionally tough people."
So says Irish director Gar O'Rourke as he discusses his feature debut documentary, Sanatorium, a life-affirming study of the staff and guests at the Kuyalnik Sanatorium near Odesa.
Watch: The trailer for Sanatorium
Sanatorium is one of the most unusual films you'll see this year - and has just been selected as Ireland's entry in the International Feature Film category for next year's Oscars.
"There's an intangible aura and magic within this building that we wanted to bottle," says O'Rourke.
Below, he explains how he and his all-Ukrainian crew did just that.
Harry Guerin: Irish director ends up making a fascinating documentary about a Ukrainian sanatorium that re-opens during the war. How does that even start to happen?
Gar O'Rourke: My relationship with Ukraine goes back seven years. I had made a short documentary in Kiev in 2019 about this absolutely brutal and powerful outdoor gym called Kachalka, which had a reputation as being the world's most hardcore gym! It was maybe a few years after that that I heard about the sanatoriums. I thought, 'Wow, this is unusual. This is a place where people take their holidays, but they stay there for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, some people stay there for six weeks. They take treatments every day, but they also kind of stay [put]'. I thought, 'Wow, I have to go over there and see what's going on'.
When was this?
That was 2021 in Spring. I got on a plane and after a week of mud baths, hydro massages, electro massages, salt pool, I thought, 'This place is magic'. I fell in love with the place very quickly and I fell in love more so with the staff and the guests. I just thought, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like this, but there's something happening in this building that I think there's something to take from it'. Whether it's this idea that you don't need a five-star hotel wellness resort to get results...
If you look at The White Lotus, they're in this plush resort with all the trimmings and all the luxury. Here, it was all stripped back. There was no pampering or nothing of luxury, nothing like that - but people were getting results from it!
And then Ukraine was invaded.
Less than a year after that, the Russian invasion happened. When the war happened, the sanatorium closed. It was quite close to the front line. Odesa at that time was a place where the Russians were looking at strategically to take by sea. The Ukrainians made that extremely difficult for them, and they never did take it - and they won't.
And the sanatorium reopened.
The sanatorium closed their doors and we thought, 'Right, well that's it. We're not going to make the film now'. And then, maybe six/seven months later, the sanatorium decided, 'Maybe people need this place more than ever. We have to move forward here in this situation'. When they opened their doors, I thought, 'Wow, this is the film. This is the story'.
This is much more than a film about healing; it's really a film about the strength of the Ukrainian people during this time. It's a very different idea of what it is to be courageous in a warzone, but when you see a woman in a bikini putting mud on herself and there's smoke in the distance of Odesa - that's an image I think that stays in your mind. You think, 'Wow, that could be my mother or my auntie, or that could be my sister'. The image of being on holiday is much more relatable to us; what isn't relatable is the looming war just around the corner.
And were the staff and guests alright with you? You just said, 'I want to make a film', and they said, 'Work away!'?
So much of the way I make films is all about relationship building with people. That takes a long time. For me, everything is about really understanding people and growing that relationship with the people. I had done several trips over there in the development of making this film, some of those were during the war as well. The main thing I wanted was to develop a relationship with the staff - and some of the guests, of course. But the staff were always there and they were the backbone really to this facility, keeping it running all the time.
This is a long process. It's a long process to develop those relationships and for people to trust you and bring you into their lives. You try and tell people up front very clearly what it is that you're interested in showing in their story, and you let them know and be very honest about it.
Two of the guests, mother and son Natalia and Andriy, have effectively become the stars of the film.
I think people really remember them and they think, 'Wow, they're such characters'. But, you know, at their core, that's a mother and a son on holiday together. It's an opportunity - and you see it in the film - where the mother is doing her best really to accept the fact that her only son still isn't married at 40. She wants the grandkids, she's not getting them. Granny's given him the apartment. He promised he'd have a wife by now, he hasn't got the wife by now.
As usual, the mammy steals the show.
She's larger than life - but she is like this! When the camera's not in front of her face, she's like that! She was so insistent that she would be in this film! We talked three or four times before we decided that she'd be in the film. Every single conversation ended with, 'You can't make the film without me in the film! You're not going to do it without me!'
We had our Ukrainian premiere in Kyiv two months ago; I was there for a week. She was there in front of the audience - and she was in tears. She loved the film. You worry [because] when you have a larger-than-life person like that you think, 'There's a responsibility to portray them in an authentic and respectful way'. All you can hope is that they saw what you were trying to do with the story and that your intentions were good.
People will be surprised by the humour in Sanatorium.
When you make a documentary like that, sometimes it doesn't even feel like a documentary. It feels like you're watching almost something scripted. It isn't scripted. It's really finding people who will remain true to who they are in front of the camera. Finding people who don't have some of the inhibitions that I would have as an Irish person if you put a camera in my face! But, you know, Ukrainian people at this time have much bigger problems on their plates than a camera.
In my notes, I wrote, 'Life goes on' - and then one of the guests said exactly the same thing.
I think maybe it's one of the central messages. There is an extraordinary sense of resilience and power in seeing ordinary people getting on with their lives in extraordinary times. Bravery doesn't always have to be someone on the frontline with a gun. I think you can see it in other ways. Where you see, look, someone's going to retain their sense of humour, they're going to retain the ability to make light and joke and all of these things in a very dark situation. For me, that's something I'm really proud to show.
The sanatorium have really embraced this film. We were always honest. We said, 'Look, we're not making a promotional film. We want to make an honest film about human experiences'. But they have really taken ownership over this film and they really love it, despite the film going into warts and all. The place isn't perfect, but I think for us it was the biggest seal of approval for the staff to say, 'Look, we understand what you were trying to do here'. We're trying to show something that wasn't visibly obvious to the rest of the world.
And now their story will reach a wider audience because Sanatorium has been chosen as Ireland's entry in the International Feature Film category for next year's Oscars.
So much work goes into making a film like this, and you really never know how something is going to be received. People work so hard to make these films. As a director, I'm directing, but I'm also a representative of this film. I'm the person who has the opportunity to say to you, 'There's so many people involved in making this'. First of all, our Ukrainian team were phenomenal - all-Ukrainian crew. And then we had the producers in Dublin - Ken Wardrop, Andrew Freedman, Samantha Corr of Venom Films. Venom you may know from previous documentaries like His & Hers, Making the Grade, Katie. These are people who just put so much effort into it.
To be selected as Ireland's official entry into the Oscars, the way I see it, it's kind of a win already. Whether we get nominated or shortlisted or not, I think it says a lot about where Ireland is as a country to select a film like Sanatorium to represent the country. It says how outward-facing we are as a country.
What's your next film?
We're about three-quarters of the way through shooting my next documentary, which is a film called The Siege of Paradise. It's about overtourism in a place in Italy called Cinque Terre. It's a film that is observational in style and it's told through a variety of perspectives, where we really get into the reality of what it's like to live in a place where the lifeblood of the economy is tourism.
Sanatorium is in cinemas now. The 15-film International Feature Film shortlist for the Oscars will be announced on 16 December. The final five nominees will be announced on 22 January, 2026.
