It began with a visit to a morgue in Belarus. (Just in case you’re wondering: No, the author of those lines has never began an article with those words.) White Snail, the brand new movie from directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, which world premiered in competition on the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival on Friday, is different, to say the least.
“A Belarusian model dreaming of a profession in China finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue,” reads a synopsis of the movie, which stars Marya Imbro and Mikhail Senkov as Masha and Misha, respectively. “Their encounter unsettles her sense of body, beauty and mortality.” The film guarantees ”the delicate love story of two outsiders who turn one another’s worlds the wrong way up and discover that they aren’t alone.”
Kremser and Peter, in a directors’ statement, also describe the story as “a turning point in two young lives in Belarus — a moment of defiance against stigma and exclusion.” They usually add: “Open questions on a future not yet decipherable arise, like something smoldering within the haze of sultry summer nights.”
Intramovies is handling international sales on the Austrian-German co-production from producers
Lixi Frank and David Bohun of Panama Film, and Kremser and Peter of RaumZeitFilm.
Key members of the White Snail team, its stars, who spoke via a translator, its directors, and its producers, met the press and the Locarno audience in two sessions on Friday, sharing the genesis and journey of the movie, which also gives viewers a rare look inside life in Belarus.
Ten years ago, Kremser met the Senkov as an artist when attending the Minsk Film Festival. “He invited us to the morgue,” she recalled. “For the primary time in my life, I saw a dead body. And 10 minutes after this encounter, which was already very impressive and special, he showed me his apartment, which, as you see within the movie, was stuffed with huge paintings. And one in all them was of a lady who tried to [die] by suicide and survived.”
Peter said he was fascinated when he heard concerning the meeting with Senkov. “I desired to see his perspective,” he shared. “I desired to see what this man sees.”
Then Imbro joined the combo after the administrators looked, including on social media, for a young woman in Belarus who they found interesting and fascinating. “We found Masha, and again, an entire latest universe appeared to us from this moment on,” Peter explained. “We frolicked with each of them, seeing a variety of their life, what’s around them, and took a variety of time to construct the [story] and the script.”
That story for the romantic drama was developed based on the lives and experiences of the 2 stars.
‘White Snail’
Courtesy of Panama Film, RaumZeitFilm
Asked about being an actor, Senkov shared that opening up about his life on screen wasn’t difficult for him. “It didn’t require any particular courage, because on this story, there’s nothing that shouldn’t be me,” he said. “It’s just me on screen.”
The experience was very different for Imbro. “It was a difficult task for me, because I used to be asked to indicate myself, which took quite a variety of energy and a variety of trust,” she explained. “In regular life, I don’t show my emotions, but this time, I needed to type of show what I’m.”
The administrators surprised the audience by revealing the film had no script, and was largely improvised. “All of the dialogs, all of the content spoken within the film is actually Masha and Misha’s,” Kremser said. “There was no scripted dialog. It was all improvised. They met on the primary joint shooting day. That was their real first encounter.”
As if there weren’t enough challenges, Bohun identified how the shortage of direct plane access to Belarus created logistical headaches. “You will have to enter the country by automobile, where a three-hour automobile ride is [needed between] two cities, and the [whole trip] can take as much as 18 hours due to all of the procedures. So, from a producer’s perspective, yeah, it was a high-risk production. We had Plan A, Plan B, Plan C.”
Kremser said the film’s title got here about late in the method: “The snail idea really comes from Masha’s life. Her real mother was buying snails” as a skincare treatment, identical to within the movie. Masha was telling us that she, one time, used this as a treatment, but then she didn’t prefer it anymore. So yeah, they found their way and were really crawling into this film.” Added Peter: “Snails are so vulnerable typically, but a white snail much more so.”
Speaking of vulnerability, how was the primary meeting between the 2 stars? “The primary encounter was very transient. I just blinked,” Imbro recalled. “We almost didn’t talk,” Senkov shared. “We just checked out one another, and I saw that we were profoundly different, and yet there was something profound we had in common, and so I understood that we might click.”