Inside Tampere, the Finnish city known as the sauna capital of the world.
Long: Tampere holds more public saunas than any other city in Finland, and this film moves through them the way locals do. At Rajaportti, one bather recalls his first löyly as a boy. At Rauhaniemi, a lakeside sauna, community members describe mourning it in advance of its renovation. In Hämeenkyrö, volunteers who built and run their own smoke sauna walk through the full process: the four-hour heat-up, the lid placed over the stones once the fire dies down, the first “carbon monoxide löyly,” and ventilation sized just right. What emerges is a civic habit: sauna as something a city maintains together, and mourns when it changes.