diff --git a/changelog.d/7212.misc b/changelog.d/7212.misc
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b57fc5f28859
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog.d/7212.misc
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Roll back the pin to Pillow 7.0 which was introduced in Synapse 1.12.2.
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 03b30cd12f18..6bafe468d9cd 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+matrix-synapse-py3 (1.12.2ubuntu1) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
+
+  * Update the Debian build scripts to handle the new installation paths
+   for the support libraries introduced by Pillow 7.1.1.
+
+ -- Richard van der Hoff <richard@matrix.org>  Thu, 02 Apr 2020 23:18:52 +0100
+
 matrix-synapse-py3 (1.12.2) stable; urgency=medium
 
   * New synapse release 1.12.2.
diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index a4d2ce2ba4cd..c744060a57ae 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -15,17 +15,38 @@ override_dh_installinit:
 # we don't really want to strip the symbols from our object files.
 override_dh_strip:
 
+# dh_shlibdeps calls dpkg-shlibdeps, which finds all the binary files
+# (executables and shared libs) in the package, and looks for the shared
+# libraries that they depend on. It then adds a dependency on the package that
+# contains that library to the package.
+#
+# We make two modifications to that process...
+#
 override_dh_shlibdeps:
-        # make the postgres package's dependencies a recommendation
-        # rather than a hard dependency.
+        # Firstly, postgres is not a hard dependency for us, so we want to make
+        # the things that psycopg2 depends on (such as libpq) be
+        # recommendations rather than hard dependencies. We do so by
+        # running dpkg-shlibdeps manually on psycopg2's libs.
+        #
 	find debian/$(PACKAGE_NAME)/ -path '*/site-packages/psycopg2/*.so' | \
 	    xargs dpkg-shlibdeps -Tdebian/$(PACKAGE_NAME).substvars \
 	        -pshlibs1 -dRecommends
 
-        # all the other dependencies can be normal 'Depends' requirements,
-        # except for PIL's, which is self-contained and which confuses
-        # dpkg-shlibdeps.
-	dh_shlibdeps -X site-packages/PIL/.libs -X site-packages/psycopg2
+        # secondly, we exclude PIL's libraries from the process. They are known
+        # to be self-contained, but they have interdependencies and
+        # dpkg-shlibdeps doesn't know how to resolve them.
+        #
+        # As of Pillow 7.1.0, these libraries are in
+        # site-packages/Pillow.libs. Previously, they were in
+        # site-packages/PIL/.libs.
+        #
+        # (we also need to exclude psycopg2, of course, since we've already
+        # dealt with that.)
+        #
+	dh_shlibdeps \
+	    -X site-packages/PIL/.libs \
+	    -X site-packages/Pillow.libs \
+	    -X site-packages/psycopg2
 
 override_dh_virtualenv:
 	./debian/build_virtualenv
diff --git a/synapse/python_dependencies.py b/synapse/python_dependencies.py
index 3274eb986391..8de8cb2c1287 100644
--- a/synapse/python_dependencies.py
+++ b/synapse/python_dependencies.py
@@ -61,9 +61,7 @@
     "pyasn1-modules>=0.0.7",
     "daemonize>=2.3.1",
     "bcrypt>=3.1.0",
-    # Pillow 7.1.0 causes the following issue on debian buster:
-    # https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/issues/2377
-    "pillow>=4.3.0,<7.1.0",
+    "pillow>=4.3.0",
     "sortedcontainers>=1.4.4",
     "pymacaroons>=0.13.0",
     "msgpack>=0.5.2",