A Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself unexpectedly drawn to a reclusive night-shift 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.
Meanwhile, Masha’s parents urge her to leave the country, and her agent pushes her to build an international career. With European borders closing, only a casting in China offers an opportunity. And yet, Masha and Misha leave the city behind, bound by hope and the chance of discovering the unknown. But can such an unconventional love bloom in the barren world around them?
The fragile love story of two contemporary outsiders who reweave each other’s threads and discover they are not alone.

Elsa Kremser (*1985 Wolfsberg/Austria) and Levin Peter (*1985 Jena/Germany) are a directing-duo and the founders of the Vienna based production company RAUMZEITFILM. After they started their collaboration during their film studies in 2009, their first documentary SPACE DOGS premiered in 2019 in Locarno and was shown at more than 70 festivals worldwide.
This was followed by DREAMING DOGS, a feature-length experimental film that received significant international attention by curators and festivals. They were awarded with the Carinthian Cultural Award for Film, the Nipkow fellowship, the Gerd Ruge fellowship and the ExtraValue Artist Residency New York. WHITE SNAIL is their first fiction feature.