DER MASSEUR

Zhenia (Alec Utgoff) comes from Ukraine, from the area around Chernobyl, and one morning stands at the Polish border with a massage table. Shortly afterwards he goes door to door in a development of identical villas outside Warsaw. His clientele – an exhausted mother, a cancer patient, a dog owner, a former soldier – hand him their backs and soon their worries as well. After each treatment they find themselves, for a moment, in a snow-covered forest. Zhenia says little, occasionally hypnotises, and becomes a screen for the neighbourhood’s projections: healer, lover, stranger. In “Der Masseur” (Poland 2020), Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert tell of a middle class that has everything and longs for deliverance.

The film combines satire on the Polish suburbs with a fable that never resolves; the original title, “Śniegu już nigdy nie będzie”, means “It will never snow again”. Englert, otherwise Szumowska’s cinematographer, co-directs here for the first time. It premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2020; the film was Poland’s submission for the Oscar. “Der Masseur” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2020.