Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (film)

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Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass film poster.jpg
Official release poster
Directed by Stephen Quay
Timothy Quay
Written by
  • Stephen Quay
  • Timothy Quay
Based on Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
by Bruno Schulz
Produced by
  • Lucie Conrad
  • Izabella Kiszka-Hoflik
Starring
  • Tadeusz Janiszewski
  • Wioletta Kopańska
  • Andrzej Kłak
  • Allison Bell
  • Zenaida Yanowsky
CinematographyBartosz Bieniek
Edited by
  • Stephen Quay
  • Timothy Quay
Music byTimothy Nelson
Production
companies
Distributed byKimStim
Release dates
  • 29 August 2024 (2024-08-29)(Venice)
  • 11 April 2025 (2025-04-11)(Poland)
  • 29 August 2025 (2025-08-29)(New York City)
Running time
76 minutes [1]
Countries
  • Poland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
LanguagePolish

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is a 2024 live-action/animated hybrid independent fantasy drama film written and directed by Stephen and Timothy Quay. Based on the 1937 novel by Bruno Schulz, the film follows Jozef as he experiences fragmented and dreamlike scenarios at a remote Galician sanatorium. It is the third feature-length film by the Brothers Quay and their first feature-length film in nearly two decades. Starring Tadeusz Janiszewski, Wioletta Kopańska, Andrzej Kłak, Allison Bell, and Zenaida Yanowsky, the film premiered in the "Giornate degli Autori" section at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on 29 August 2024, and was theatrically released in the Film Forum theatre in New York City on 29 August 2025, by KimStim.

Contents

Premise

Jozef embarks on a journey via a ghostly train to visit his dying father in a remote Galician sanatorium. Upon arrival, he discovers that the sanatorium exists in a realm where time is distorted—his father's death has not yet occurred, as time here lags behind the outside world by an undefined interval. Jozef's experiences become increasingly fragmented and dreamlike as he confronts various manifestations of his father, each representing different aspects of their relationship and his own psyche. [2]

Cast

Production

Development and casting

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is the third feature-length film from Stephen and Timothy Quay, after Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005). [3] The film is shot in the Polish language, with a cast that includes Tadeusz Janiszewski, Wioletta Kopańska, Andrzej Kłak, Allison Bell, and Zenaida Yanowsky. [4] [5] [6] Yanowsky previously starred in the Quay Brothers' dance films The Sandman (2000) and Eurydice: She, So Beloved (2007). [7] [8] Based on the 1937 novel of the same name by Bruno Schulz, the film mixes live-action with stop-motion animation. [9] [10] The novel was previously adapted for the film The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973), written and directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has. [4] [11] The Quay Brothers had previously adapted Schulz's work for their short film Street of Crocodiles (1986). [3] Christopher Nolan served as an executive producer and presenter on Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. [10] He had previously written and directed a documentary short about the Quay Brothers, titled Quay (2015), and executive produced their short film The Doll's Breath (2019). [12] [13] [14]

Music

Timothy Nelson served as the film's composer, having previously scored several short films for the Quay Brothers. [1] [15] Work on the soundtrack began in 2007 and was released on 19 November 2024, in four separate volumes. [16] [17] [18] [19]

Always Night Here (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume One)
No.TitleLength
1."Labrynthine"2:56
2."Swollen-Faced Railwayman"1:13
3."Last Breath"0:35
4."Consolation of Colours"2:39
5."It Is Never Night Here"2:10
6."A Certain Interval of Time"2:39
7."At the Mercy of Draughts"2:41
8."Telescope"2:10
9."Still More Tarts"1:24
10."Black Fern"4:48
11."Secondhand Time"2:46
12."Bookbinder"3:31
13."Rubbish and Straw"3:58
14."Empty Landscapes of Sleep"4:16
15."Blue Flame"2:32
16."Asleep Again"3:52
17."Arms of Morpheus"3:56
18."Chalk (Corridor 1)"3:00
19."Bottle Glass"4:05
20."Grope (Corridor 2)"2:45
21."Musk"2:05
22."Dust (Corridor 3)"1:21
23."It Is Always Night Here"4:16
Total length:65:40
Ghost Print Of It (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Two)
No.TitleLength
1."Spore (Corridor 4)"1:54
2."Mote (Corridor 5)"1:16
3."Dusk"4:16
4."Ghost Print of It (Corridor 6)"1:16
5."In Negative (Corridor 7)"1:16
6."Asphodel"4:40
7."Meteorologia (Corridor 8)"1:23
8."Through Mourning Crepe"2:34
9."Shimmer (Corridor 9)"0:48
10."Magnetique"4:56
11."Bell Jar"2:37
12."Shadow (Corridor 10)"2:37
13."Twilight (Corridor 11)"3:56
14."Transom"6:24
15."Skylight"2:37
16."Bianca mit Streichern"4:45
17."Luna"3:36
18."Spectra (Corridor 12)"1:35
19."Thirteenth Month (Corridor 13)"4:08
20."Headlights"4:17
21."Penumbra (Corridor 14)"2:13
22."Microscope"3:39
23."Bianca's Jumprope"2:31
Total length:69:14
Nest Upended (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Three)
No.TitleLength
1."Ciemny"4:44
2."Strefa"4:02
3."Wiatr"2:36
4."Windpipe"3:38
5."Synchro"3:37
6."Nest Upended"4:10
7."Windowsill Choir"3:16
8."Jaśnieć"4:16
9."Inkubator"4:02
10."Pileus"3:01
11."Blask"4:24
12."She Sits on the Passenger Seat, Tuning the Radio With Her Feet"2:51
13."Used Chalk"5:21
14."Undula"2:22
15."Another Russian Racehorse"2:40
16."Slipper"1:29
17."Radiogramma"0:13
18."Nearly Naked"2:17
19."Waterbed"1:20
20."Meteorological"2:28
Total length:62:47
Slowly Rising Swallow (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Four)
No.TitleLength
1."Unstuck"1:44
2."Lungs"2:08
3."Naked"2:34
4."Ptaszek"1:09
5."Lowdown Dirty"2:27
6."Slowly Rising Swallow"1:17
7."The Swallow's Appendage"2:50
8."...and Thus, He Became a Criminal"3:14
9."Under the Ground Beneath the Derricks"1:47
10."Always Deep Here Too"1:46
11."Untranslatable"1:41
12."Lumbitor (KE 80)"1:51
13."Nocte in Perpetuam"1:55
14."Nothing Runs Like a Deere"3:18
15."Miss "X" (KE 87)"2:04
16."Other"2:08
17."Paluba"2:34
18."Unbuttoned More Slowly"1:13
19."Still Wroughten"4:10
20."Up at the Very Top of the Derricks"1:53
21."But Not Completely So"2:07
22."Debauched Electrical Band"3:32
23."Always Even Deeper"3:14
24."Alicia Redux 3"1:55
25."Alicia Redux 9"2:21
26."Never Ever Vibes Here"1:09
27."Always Vibes Here"1:24
28."Młotki 2"0:42
29."Celeste"0:42
30."Splet"0:37
31."Wound"0:59
32."Ohilikethat"0:12
33."Gwizdek 5"0:47
34."Triple Chin"0:49
35."The Debased Parade"2:13
Total length:66:26

Release

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass had its world premiere in the "Giornate degli Autori" section at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on 29 August 2024. [2] [20] It also played at the 57th Sitges Film Festival on 8 October 2024, the BFI London Film Festival on 10 October 2024, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival on 5 November 2024, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival on 13 November 2024, the 55th International Film Festival of India on 23 November 2024, the Göteborg Film Festival on 24 January 2025, the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam on 2 February 2025, the Timeless Film Festival Warsaw on 8 April 2025, the 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival on 12 April 2025, the Jeonju International Film Festival on 2 May 2025, the 2025 Seattle International Film Festival on 18 May 2025, and the Melbourne International Film Festival on 13 August 2025. [a] In March 2025, the film played during the "Dormitorium – The Film Décors of The Quay Brothers" exhibition, at Bloomsbury's Swedenborg House, as part of the 23rd Polish Film Festival. [26] The film had a limited theatrical release on 11 April 2025 in Poland and on 12 July 2025 in Japan. [27] It was theatrically released in the Film Forum theatre in New York City on 29 August 2025, by KimStim. [10] The theater previously hosted the world premiere of Quay, Nolan's documentary short film about the Brothers Quay. [28] [29]

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 87% of 15 critics' reviews are positive. [30] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [31]

Guy Lodge of Variety gave a positive review, writing "Seductive and confounding in equal measure, the Quays' latest is enough of a trip that our world looks a little stranger when the lights come up and we emerge, blearily blinking, back into it". [1] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily also gave a positive review, summarzing that it is "a transporting, ghostly affair. The Quay Brothers' trademark stop-motion animation is as haunting as ever, the delicate, banged-up puppets suggesting the characters' emotional fragility and buried pains". [9] Roberto Oggiano of Cineuropa similarly praised the film's "world that the Quay brothers have built is one so ethereal and elusive that, paradoxically, it is destined to last, in this confused mass of memories we call cinema". [32] Geoff Andrew gave a positive review of the film's puppetry, praising "the fantastic, enigmatic tableaux of grotesque characters (some more or less human, some not at all, some impressively weird hybrids) ... such is the meticulous, almost absurdly detailed assemblage of the hand-crafted figures in their likewise painstakingly hand-crafted landscapes that one is overtaken by a strange sense of life not extinguished but temporarily put on pause" [33] Steve Kopian of Unseen Films praised the film's music, writing "This has to be one of the greatest marriages of image and music that has ever been put on film. Rarely has any film used music so perfectly from start to finish. Neither lifts more than the other and the result is an emotional punch that leaves us haunted at the end." [34]

Accolades

The film was nominated at the 81st Venice International Film Festival for the "Giornate degli Autori Director's Award". [35] It was also the runner-up for the 2024 International Cinephile Society award for "Best Animated Film", but lost to Gints Zilbalodis ' Flow (2024). [36]

Notes

  1. ↑ Attributed to multiple sources: [21] [22] [5] [23] [24] [25] [6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lodge, Guy (2 September 2024). "'Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass' Review: The Quay Brothers' Surreal Stop-Motion Fantasia Is a Mouthful, an Eyeful and a Mind-Melt". Variety. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  2. 1 2 Raup, Jordan (17 April 2025). "Exclusive: The Quay Brothers' Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Acquired by KimStim". The Film Stage. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  3. 1 2 Brooks, Xan (3 September 2024). "'We never went down the Aardman route': how the Brothers Quay rocked the animation world". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  4. 1 2 Balaga, Marta (29 August 2024). "Animation Legends Quay Brothers Head to 'Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass' Where 'Mystery Is a Potent Force' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety . Retrieved 7 August 2025.
  5. 1 2 "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  6. 1 2 "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". MIFF. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  7. ↑ Christiansen, Rupert (6 October 2007). "She, So Beloved: A Magical Vision of Hell" . The Daily Telegraph . Archived from the original on 23 January 2025. Retrieved 15 August 2025.
  8. ↑ "The Sandman (TV)". FilmAffinity. Retrieved 15 August 2025.
  9. 1 2 Grierson, Tim (29 August 2024). "'Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass': Venice Review". Screen Daily . Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  10. 1 2 3 Raup, Jordan (31 July 2025). "Exclusive Trailer for the Quay Brothers' Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, Presented by Christopher Nolan'". The Film Stage. Retrieved 31 July 2025.
  11. ↑ Hodge, Nick (7 August 2010). "Wojciech Has and the Interpretation of Dreams". Krakow Post . Lifeboat Ltd. Archived from the original on 2 June 2024. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  12. ↑ Labrecque, Jeff (27 July 2015). "Christopher Nolan's next movie is a documentary short". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  13. ↑ Hoffman, Jordan (20 August 2015). "The Quay Brothers: a nightmarish inspiration for Christopher Nolan". The Guardian . Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  14. ↑ Dudok de Wit, Alex (27 August 2024). "'Images Heard And A Music Seen': A Conversation With The Brothers Quay". Move Madly. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  15. ↑ "Timothy Nelson". Mubi. Retrieved 15 August 2025.
  16. ↑ "Always Night Here (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume One), by Timothy Nelson". Tim Nelson. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  17. ↑ "Ghost Print Of It (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Two), by Timothy Nelson". Tim Nelson. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  18. ↑ "Nest Upended (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Three), by Timothy Nelson". Tim Nelson. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  19. ↑ "Slowly Rising Swallow (Music Inspired by the Writings & Drawings of Bruno Schulz, Volume Four), by Timothy Nelson". Tim Nelson. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  20. ↑ "SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS". Giornate degli Autori. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  21. ↑ Romero, Miguel Ángel (10 September 2024). "Sitges 2024 anuncia su programación definitiva: las mejores películas de terror que podremos ver este año". Cinemanía (in Spanish). Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  22. ↑ Ntim, Zac (4 September 2024). "BFI London Film Festival Lineup: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin To Debut 'Endurance', Baker, Heller, Berger & Abbasi's Trump Movie Among Headline Galas — Full List". Deadline. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  23. ↑ "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". IFFIGOA. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  24. ↑ "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Jeonju International Film Festival. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  25. ↑ Spletzer, Andy. "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". SIFF. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  26. ↑ Lang, Robert (24 March 2025). "Luminaries of Stop-Motion: A Quay Brothers Retrospective". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  27. ↑ "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2025)". The Numbers . Retrieved 10 August 2025.
  28. ↑ Thill, Scott (17 August 2015). "The Brothers Quay Take Christopher Nolan's 'Quay' Documentary On Tour". Cartoon Brew. Retrieved 4 August 2025.
  29. ↑ Labrecque, Jeff (27 July 2015). "Christopher Nolan's next movie is a documentary short". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 4 August 2025.
  30. ↑ "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 7 September 2025.
  31. ↑ "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Metacritic . Fandom, Inc. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  32. ↑ Oggiano, Roberto (22 October 2024). "Review: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Cineuropa . Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  33. ↑ Andrew, Geoff (26 March 2025). "Impossible Worlds Made Real: The Quay Brothers in Bloomsbury". geoffandrew.com. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  34. ↑ Kopian, Steve (27 August 2025). "Sanatorium Under The SIgn Of The Hourglass (2024) starts Friday at the Film Forum". Unseen Films. Retrieved 30 August 2025.
  35. ↑ Scarpa, Vittoria; Zoica, Daniele (12 September 2024). "Quay Brothers • Directors of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass". Cineuropa. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  36. ↑ "The 2024 International Cinephile Society (ICS) Winners". Next Best Picture. 9 February 2025. Archived from the original on 15 February 2025. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
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