We talked to White Snail [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Elsa Kremser et Levin Peter
fiche film] directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter on the occasion of the Locarno Film Festival where the film is selected in competition. The feature deals with the themes of urban isolation and poor mental health, and it’s based on true stories which are acted out by two unprofessional actors, who also are the real-life protagonists of these tales.

Cineuropa: Your characters Masha and Misha have such compelling personalities and stories. How did you find them and what was involved in shaping their characters?
Elsa Kremser: I met Misha ten years ago on a trip to a film festival where I was randomly introduced to him. He was working in a morgue on the outskirts of Minsk, and he showed me around it. For the first time in my life, I saw a dead body - a suicide victim - and it was very impactful. Shortly afterwards, he showed me his apartment, which was quite close to the places you see in the film, and there were lots of his incredible paintings. There was one that caught my attention, so I asked him about it. It was the face of a younger woman who looked dead, in a way, but also alive with alert eyes. I asked him about the story behind that particular painting, and he told me about a young woman who had contacted him on social media. She’d survived a suicide attempt and had reached out to him, saying that she’d somehow been kept alive by his paintings. We’d always been looking for a key, for a way in, to include Misha’s visual art in the film, and Masha embodied that connection perfectly.

What were the challenges and advantages of choosing first-time actors?
Levin Peter: It was definitely a challenge, but also an advantage. They both brought a lot to the set, because the stories were based on their lives, their emotions. We thought we needed to create real tension because they’re non-actors. They’d never seen each other before the first day they shot together. That was really helpful: they’d known for years that someone would be their companion in the film, so they were constantly asking about each other. They wondered what the other one looked like, there was a lot of anticipation, belief, and imagination. So when they finally met, the room was full of energy. The chemistry wasn’t always right, sometimes things moved in the wrong direction and we had to guide them back, but there was always intensity, never emptiness or boredom.

The colours are very vibrant in your film. Could you talk about your choices in terms of the movie’s palette and overall visuals?
EK: It was always crucial that we captured the atmosphere of Minsk, especially how the night-light shapes the city. Few imagine a post-Soviet city could be so vibrant, with every single corner illuminated, but, for us, this brightness became a metaphor for the country itself.

LP: The film is set in the summer, which is why we often recalled our own youth during that season, when the nights feel endless, rhythms shift, and encounters can feel like they last entire lifetimes, even if they end within a few months. That bittersweet feeling is best expressed in the blue and warm yellow tones of summer nights, which we chose as the film’s main palette with our DOP, Mikhail Khursevich.

What role do you feel Belarus plays, as the setting for your film?
EK: The main reason for choosing Belarus was related to our encounter with Misha, but in those ten years, Belarus’ history has inevitably changed. We always felt that we needed to show the lives of the people living there and to share insight into a country which we don’t get many images of, besides the ones on the news. Through Mascha and Mischa, we wanted to observe up-close the psychological struggles of living in Belarus, to show how deeply they feel the country’s isolation and how difficult it is for them to connect with the outside world. These were all questions that were driving us and which motivated us to take up the challenge to make this film.

When you first started writing, did you imagine it as more of a love story or a socially focused film? You didn’t lean into the romance too heavily…
LP: The film begins with two people who’ve never had the privilege of being truly understood: they’ve never felt appreciated, embraced, or accepted, and that’s the reason they need to meet. That’s why, in the middle of the night, she knocks on his door: deep down, she knows it’s not about seeing a corpse but meeting someone who understands this place and who might just share her particular, even abnormal, view of life and death. I use the word "privilege" intentionally, because it really is a privilege, considering that, for some people, it can take a lifetime to realise that they’re enough the way they are. Some might never get to feel that at all. It might sound like a small thing, but it’s actually huge. It’s also something that can happen through friendship, love, even hate, because sometimes being hated can give you the sense that your existence matters. With this in mind, it didn’t really matter to us whether it was love or not. That’s why we never saw the film as just a romance: what we wanted to achieve was to show two people experiencing the rare privilege of being seen.