“White Snail, The New Movie from Directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter (Space Dogs), Took 10 Years To Conceive and Shoot. Snail’s Pace, SO to Speak! After it World Premiere in Competition at the Locarno Film Festival Earlier this month, thorough, White Snail Was Soon Considired a Dark Horse. D Ended Up Winning A SPECIAL JURY”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
After Its World Premiere in Competition at the Locarno Film Festival Earlier this month, though, White Snail Was Soon Considered A Dark Horse. And it ended up vinning a special jury prize at the venerable swiss festival. Plus, Stars Marya “Masha” Imbro and Mikhail “MISHA” SENKOV, WHO APPEAR IN THE FILM as Masha and Misha, Were Honored With Best Performance Awards.
The Filmmakers and Their Stars Have Been Busy As Bees, Following Up Locarno with Spoth in the Fiction Feature Competition of the 31st Edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, Which Runs Thraug. 22.
The Romantic Drama Tells The Story of a Belarusian Model Dreaming of a Career in China Who Finds Herself Drawn to a Mysterios Loner Whoer Works The Night Shift at A Morgy. “Their Encounter Unsettles her Sense of Body, Beauty, and Mortality,” Says A synopsis, whohkh promises ”The Fragile Love Story Are Not Alone. ”
The story in the movie was devloped Based on the Lives and Experiences of the Two Stars. But It Had No Script and Was Largely Improvised.
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.
At Sarajevo, Kremser and Peter Talked to Thr About What Went Into Making White SnailRepresentation Depression and Suicidal Thought on Screen, and the Importance of Images and Metaphors in the Film.
You Two Have Mentioned that You Actual Worked in A MorGue for A Few Days to Prepare for the Film. Can You Share Some Insight Into How This Came About?
Peter MISHA BROUGHT US TO SEVERAL MORGESE IN MINSK. This was the starting encounter. We Were Amazed by How Actual Dead People Look. It’s Very Different from The Image That We Seie In Mainstream Cinema. And then we understood that we have needed to spend time in the morgue for prractical reasons – to understand the movements there, the working Methods, etc.
IT WAS A Long Negotation Until We Were Allowed in Like Medical Students. We Arrived with Our Dop, and The Person Who Worked in the Morgin Said, “No, You’re Not Going To Watch Me. That’s Annoying. You’re Going To Work With Me.”
Kremser “There is so much to do it here. Please give me a helping hand.” It Was Not Easy. And it was figrent for each of us. I Think for the DOP, It Was Mainly to Understand All The Movements and How This Work Is Physically, Because It’s A Very Tough Job. I Mean, The Human Bodies Are Heavy. MISHA, IN HIS REAL LIFE, IS REALLY Suffering from 20 Years of Working there, in Terms of Back Pain.
Of Course, There Was Covid Who We Were there. So there wee many, many people in the morgue. There was no vaccination, so for US, it was a crackal point to do this. We Worked there for Three Weeks on a Daily Basis Before We Started to Shoot, ALSO TO UnderStand Misha’s Kind of Natural Habitat.
Peter There’s An Obscure But Still Very Touching Love Scene Whoy Both Put Makeup on This Elderly Lady Who Died. THINGS WE ALSO DID TO Understand How Delicate This All Is, How Much You Struggle To Touch, How Much You Think About Profound Things to Honor TheSe People.
The Characters Misha and Masha in the Film Discussy Suicide Attempts and Thought. As Filmmakers, How did you Approach Such A Sensitive Subject?
Kremser For US, IT WAS VERY IMPORTANT TO REALLY GET CLESE TO MASHA’S REAL Feelings to Understand Where This Depression and Suicidal Thought Can Come from. And so we were researching with Many Young People, Not Only in Belarus, Talking To Them To Find Out What The Reason for This Is. And there are Multiple Reasons for Depression and for Being Lonely, and We Tried Not To Make It Claiché, But To Understand What You Actual See From Depression.
I Not an Easy Thing, Because People Usuly Hide WHEN ARE DEPRESSED, AND WE TALKED TO A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN IN TOUCH WITH WHO HAD WHO HAD WHO HAD WHO [died by] Suicide. The Hardest thing is that you don’t see it, and we wanted to show something you don’e. Because As Soon As You Make It Simple, Cinematic, and Put Up An Image, It Could Be Very Wrong, OR IT COULD EVEN MOTIVATE PEOPLE IN THE WORng Way.
Peter I Think The most Challenging and Harmphul Question for Youngster with Suicidal Thought is the Question WHY. There’s Never Be and Answer. That is WHY It WAS SO IMPORTANT THAT OUR MAIN Character, Misha, Is Never Asking Who. And it was Important for US what, in the movie, he is shown as someone who who is any knows and whoto does not need to ask. And this is, for US, The MOST PROFOUND WAY OF Understanding Each Other.
Tell me about this scene with a tree. MISHA SAYS PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT IF THEY TAKE OF CLOTHES OFF, Leave a Piece On the Tree, and Crawl Through a Hole in the Trunk, It Can Help Them. That felt a bit like shamanism. Does this tree Really exist?
Kremser In Our Time In Belarus, We Witnessed So Many Young People Who Actual Believe in All these MyTological Methods. We Were Looking for A Seer, One of the Old Women in Villages Who Read From The Water or Whisper or Make All These Kinds of Rituals. In one of the first drifts of the script, it was always such a woman that went to visit together. THEN WEER CASTING FOR SUCH A WOMAN, We Found Several Really Traditional, Old, Belarusian-Speaking Women in Faraway Villages. But We Felt It Was A Department of a cliché from Eastern Europe, A Post-Soviet Cliché, and We Didn’t Want to Romanticize this Region. But One of the TESE LADIES WAS ACTUALLY SHOWING US The TREE AND SAID, “SYME HERE FROM MINSK All the Time with Chic Cars, and then they go and undress and goine.” Of Course, We Were Amazed and Thought, Now We Have A Tool Which We Want to Use in the Film, A Real Tree.
Peter MOST OF THE CLOTHES Are Real. They Hang there for years. And the Tree Was Central, Because We Didn’t Want to Romanticize. We Also Believe that in the Post-Soviet Countries, Nostalgia Has Been Misused in the Last Decade in A Political Way. And We Really Don’t agree with this nostalgia. WHEN I FIRST STARTED TO ENCUNTER ART NOSTALGIA, FOR ME, IT WAS ABOUT AESTETICS, AND I THINK Politics Took Over. In a Lot of Countries, They Try to Make Us Believe That’s So Little Hope in the Future that Want Us to Belve That Evertything Was Better in the Past, and that’s The Theater Mytology. IT’s Very Important for US As A Metaphor.
You have meentaphors and images. MISHA PAINTS IMAGES AND HAS THEM ON HIS BODY IN THE FORM OF TATTOOS. In Contrast, Masha is Pale White. I HAD The FEELING THAT YOU WERE PLAYING with THAT, TOO, RIGHT?
Kremser Of Course. She’s Even As A Projection As A Model. And she have that white appeareance. We Can Project Everything on a White Wall, Let’s Say, and in the Modeling School, You Have to Be That Clean. And then the phone screen is again makeing Things Cleaner than they may actually be. These Two Surphaces, The Screen and the Canvas That Hay Paints On, Were Interesting for Us. We Wanted to Bring Them Together Somehow.
Peter ALSO, WHEN I THINK About Classic Coming of Age, The Sun and the Summer Always Bring Light and Hope. In Masha’s Case, and this is Tragic to US Too, It’s The Opposite. Sun is Very HarmFul to Her, to Her Skin, So She Needs to Hide Under An Umbrella. But The Night is Embracing Her. It Suits Her Much, Much Better, Because She Can Shine. So, that was bringing so Much to the Film that we could work with visualally.
Do you have an Idea or Plan for your Next Project?
Kremser There are several things in our minds. We Really Love Shooting, SO We Are Aiming to Shoot, and Not after A Very Long Time, But We Are Still in the Research Phase, SO WILL SEE WHICH OF THE IDEAS WILL STICK WITH US.
Peter We Definitely Want to Go On with Fiction in Our Way, FICTIALIZED, I Wuld Say. This is someting west to evolve even more. We just hope it dosn’t take the top long.