DIRECTORS/SCREENPLAY: Małgorzata Szumowska, Michał Englert
PRODUCERS: Agnieszka Wasiak, Mariusz Wlodarski, Viola Fügen, Michael Weber, Małgorzata Szumowska, Michał Englert
PRODUCTION CO: Lava Films, Match Factory Productions
PHOTOGRAPHY: Michał ​Englert
EDITOR: Jaroslaw Kamínski
WITH: Alec Utgoff (Zhenia), Maja Ostaszewska (Maria), Agata Kulesza (Ewa), Weronika Rosati (Wika), Katarzyna Figura (Gucci), Andrzej Chyra (Captain), Łukasz Simlat (Wika's husband), Krzysztof Czeczot (Maria's husband) 
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FESTIVALS: Venice

REVIEW

“There’s a rich confectionery of strangeness, sadness and fear to this very absorbing film by the Polish film-maker Małgorzata Szumowska, co-writing and directing with cinematographer Michał Englert… The setting is an eerily blank suburban scene: a smug, prosperous but dysfunctional community in a gated development, with identical white McMansion-style houses whose occupants all have their own secrets. It is in fact the Ventana housing estate in Walendów, eastern Poland, a place that looks so weirdly uniform that an overhead shot makes it look like a model, and a plotline about teenagers manufacturing drugs put me in mind of American Beauty, just a little.
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The bored and unsatisfied inhabitants are all of a-flutter, due to a Ukrainian masseur called Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), who comes to people’s houses with his foldaway massage table and administers physio- and hypnotherapy and works wonders. Zhenia’s ministrations are electrifying everyone. But as it happens, Zhenia comes from Chernobyl, and he is plagued with agonised dreams and memories of his mother, and of the clouds of radioactive dust that looked like snow to him. As Zhenia makes his house calls in the suburbs, autumn turns to winter, Halloween comes and goes and Christmas is on the way, but it doesn’t snow, no matter how bitterly cold it gets.”

— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

New Plymouth     
Wednesday, 15 February, 6.00pm

Nelson    
Tuesday, 07 March, 6.00pm

​Dunedin     
Wednesday, 15 March, 7.30pm

​​Bigger Picture Ōamaru  
Thursday, 30 March, 7.00pm

​​​Carterton  
Friday, 28 April, 7.00pm

Palmerston North  
Wednesday, 10 May, 6.00pm

Whanganui    
Monday, 22 May, 7.00pm

Queenstown  
Tuesday, 06 June, 8.15pm

​Wellington    
Monday, 03 July, 6.15pm

Hamilton     
Monday, 17 July, 6.30pm

​​Canterbury
Monday, 24 July, 7.00pm

Timaru  
Tuesday, 19 September, 6.00pm

Auckland
Monday, 30 October, 6.30pm

Tauranga
Thursday, 07 November, 6.00pm

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