Join for an in-depth conversation with Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter as they discuss the creative process behind White Snail and their approach to shaping stories and concepts. Working with non-professional actors, and how cinema can become a vessel for the truths we carry but cannot always say.
In White Snail a Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself unexpectedly drawn to a reclusive nightshift-worker at a morgue. Their connection begins with a chance encounter: again and again, Masha is drawn to the morgue. Under false pretenses, she finally gets inside. But it’s not the morgue itself - it’s the moment the mysterious Misha steps into her life that turns everything upside down.
Between two seemingly different outsiders, a maelstrom of mutual attraction and shy desire evolves. Carried away by summer recklessness, they drift through the twilight of Minsk’s summer nights. At Misha’s place,a new world is revealed to her: countless opulent oil-paintings show the dead from the morgue - rendered with sensuality and a tender sense of life. To their surprise, Masha is drawn to his dark, beautiful world, while he finds in her someone who truly sees him and understands his art. Their bond challenges her ideas of beauty, body, and mortality, igniting a quiet spark in both of their lives.
"The film is based on the real lives of Masha and Misha, who make their acting debut in WHITE SNAIL. The screenplay is deeply rooted in their personal biographies. When we first met them ten years ago, it became clear that they would challenge each other, provoke one another, and set each other in motion - turning their lives upside down. In real life, Masha works as a model and struggles with the psychological pressures that come with her profession. Misha has spent twenty years working in a morgue and is also an artist. He creates large-scale oil paintings that abstractly process his experiences from the morgue. These are two rich, contrasting worlds - both centered on the body and its representation, yet expressed in profoundly different ways - which we deliberately bring into collision within a fictional framework."
- Elsa Kremser & Levin Peter
White Snail won both the Special Jury Prize and a Best Performance Award for the two lead actors at Locarno.
