From multi award-winning writer/director Małgorzata Szumowska (Elles) and her long-time cinematographer Michał Englert, NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN is a beguiling modern fable about an affluent Polish community forever altered by the arrival of an enigmatic stranger who may - or may not - have powers of healing.

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One grey, foggy morning, a mysterious young man, Zhenia (Alec Utgoff, Stranger Things), crosses the border from the Ukraine into Poland, carrying only a massage table. When faced with a staid official at Warsaw’s immigration office, he secures the necessary residence permit by simply taking the man’s head in his huge, soft hands and massaging him into a trance.

Zhenia soon establishes himself with the well-to-do residents of a suburban gated community of identical white McMansions, where his unique talents quickly become in demand. Among the clientele are Maria (Maja Ostaszewska), who finds a calm in Zhenia that her hostile children and husband don’t provide; derisive widow Ewa (Agata Kulesza, Ida) who lusts after the masseur in more ways than she’ll dare admit; a woman obsessed by her three bulldogs who pleads for them to also be treated, and Wika (Weonika Rosati), who has invested the last hopes for her cancer-stricken husband (Lukasz Simlat, Corpus Christi) in Zhenia’s seemingly magical fingertips. But as he navigates through the affairs, drinking, drug-taking and games of neighbourly one-upmanship, no one thinks to ask Zhenia about his own concerns, least of all his mysterious origins…

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Anchored by Utgoff’s utterly magnetic central performance, Szumowska and Englert’s study of class and modern malaise astutely blends magic realism with dark humour and stunning production design to often jaw-dropping effect. Following Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi as Poland’s official entry to the Academy Awards, NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN is a striking jewel worthy of equal attention.

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