Morgue Visit in Belarus Led to Film About Model, Loner

It all started with a visit to a morgue in Belarus. (Just in case you’re wondering: No, the writer of these lines has never started an article with those words.) White Snail, the new movie from directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, which world premiered in competition at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival on Friday, is different, to say the least.

“A Belarusian model dreaming of a career 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 promises ”the fragile love story of two outsiders who turn each other’s worlds upside down and discover that they are not 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.” And they add: “Open questions about a future not yet decipherable arise, like something smoldering in 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 first 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 in the movie, was full of huge paintings. And one of them was of a girl who tried to [die] by suicide and survived.”

Peter said he was fascinated when he heard about the meeting with Senkov. “I wanted to see his perspective,” he shared. “I wanted to see what this man sees.”

Then Imbro joined the mix after the directors looked, including on social media, for a young woman in Belarus who they found interesting and engaging. “We found Masha, and again, a whole new universe appeared to us from this moment on,” Peter explained. “We spent time with both of them, seeing a lot of their life, what is around them, and took a lot of time to build the [story] and the script.”

That story for the romantic drama was developed based on the lives and experiences of the two stars.

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 in this story, there is nothing that is not 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 was asked to show myself, which took quite a lot of energy and a lot of trust,” she explained. “In regular life, I don’t show my emotions, but this time, I had to sort of show what I am.”

The directors surprised the audience by revealing the film had no script, and was largely improvised. “All the dialogs, all the content spoken in the film is really Masha and Misha’s,” Kremser said. “There was no scripted dialog. It was all improvised. They met on the first joint shooting day. That was their real first encounter.”

As if there weren’t enough challenges, Bohun pointed out how the lack of direct plane access to Belarus created logistical headaches. “You have to enter the country by car, where a three-hour car ride is [needed between] two cities, and the [whole trip] can take up to 18 hours because of all 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 came about late in the process: “The snail idea really comes from Masha’s life. Her real mother was buying snails” as a skincare treatment, just like in the movie. Masha was telling us that she, one time, used this as a treatment, but then she didn’t like it anymore. So yeah, they found their way and were really crawling into this film.” Added Peter: “Snails are so vulnerable in general, but a white snail even more so.”

Speaking of vulnerability, how was the first meeting between the two stars? “The first encounter was very brief. I just blinked,” Imbro recalled. “We almost didn’t talk,” Senkov shared. “We just looked at each other, and I saw that we were profoundly different, and yet there was something profound we had in common, and so I understood that we would click.”