{"id":56909,"date":"2025-08-10T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T11:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/56909\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T11:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T11:23:10","slug":"morgue-visit-in-belarus-led-to-film-about-model-loner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/56909\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgue Visit in Belarus Led to Film About Model, Loner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt all started with a visit to a morgue in Belarus. (Just in case you\u2019re 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<\/a>, which world premiered in competition at the\u00a078th edition<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Locarno Film Festival<\/a> on Friday, is different, to say the least.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue,\u201d reads a synopsis of the movie, which stars Marya Imbro and Mikhail Senkov as Masha and Misha, respectively. \u201cTheir encounter unsettles her sense of body, beauty and mortality.\u201d The film promises \u201dthe fragile love story of two outsiders who turn each other\u2019s worlds upside down and discover that they are not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKremser and Peter, in a directors\u2019 statement, also describe the story as \u201ca turning point in two young lives in Belarus \u2014 a moment of defiance against stigma and exclusion.\u201d And they add: \u201cOpen questions about a future not yet decipherable arise, like something smoldering in the haze of sultry summer nights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIntramovies is handling international<\/a> sales on the Austrian-German co-production from producers
Lixi Frank and David Bohun<\/a> of Panama Film, and Kremser and Peter of RaumZeitFilm.<\/p>\n

\n\tKey members of the White Snail team, its stars, who spoke via a translator, its directors, and its producers, met the press and the Locarno<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tTen years ago, Kremser met the Senkov as an artist when attending the Minsk Film Festival. \u201cHe invited us to the morgue,\u201d she recalled. \u201cFor 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPeter said he was fascinated when he heard about the meeting with Senkov. \u201cI wanted to see his perspective,\u201d he shared. \u201cI wanted to see what this man sees.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThen Imbro joined the mix after the directors looked, including on social media, for a young woman in Belarus who they found interesting and engaging. \u201cWe found Masha, and again, a whole new universe appeared to us from this moment on,\u201d Peter explained. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat story for the romantic drama was developed based on the lives and experiences of the two stars. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018White Snail\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Panama Film, RaumZeitFilm<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked about being an actor, Senkov shared that opening up about his life on screen wasn\u2019t difficult for him. \u201cIt didn\u2019t require any particular courage, because in this story, there is nothing that is not me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just me on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe experience was very different for Imbro. \u201cIt 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,\u201d she explained. \u201cIn regular life, I don\u2019t show my emotions, but this time, I had to sort of show what I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe directors surprised the audience by revealing the film had no script, and was largely improvised. \u201cAll the dialogs, all the content spoken in the film is really Masha and Misha\u2019s,\u201d Kremser said. \u201cThere was no scripted dialog. It was all improvised. They met on the first joint shooting day. That was their real first encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs if there weren\u2019t enough challenges, Bohun pointed out how the lack of direct plane access to Belarus created logistical headaches. \u201cYou 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\u2019s perspective, yeah, it was a high-risk production. We had Plan A, Plan B, Plan C.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKremser said the film\u2019s title came about late in the process: \u201cThe snail idea really comes from Masha\u2019s life. Her real mother was buying snails\u201d 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\u2019t like it anymore. So yeah, they found their way and were really crawling into this film.\u201d Added Peter: \u201cSnails are so vulnerable in general, but a white snail even more so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of vulnerability, how was the first meeting between the two stars? \u201cThe first encounter was very brief. I just blinked,\u201d Imbro recalled. \u201cWe almost didn\u2019t talk,\u201d Senkov shared. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It all started with a visit to a morgue in Belarus. (Just in case you\u2019re wondering: No, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,718,30264,30265,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-56909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-locarno","tag-locarno-film-festival","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}