We’re delighted to exclusively announce that KimStim has acquired all North American rights to the Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. A stop-motion/live-action masterpiece inspired by the works of Jewish-Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz, this personal passion project is their first feature since 2005’s The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.
KimStim plans to release the film theatrically later this year. Ian Stimler negotiated the deal with Thania Dimitrakopoulou, sales executive of The Match Factory, in Cologne.
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass first premiered as an Official Selection: Giornate degli Autori at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. The film is not a direct adaptation of the source material but a visual-poetic homage, blending stop-motion animation with projection-based theatrical staging that’s more about evoking Schulz’s mood and texture than telling a straightforward story.
The narrative centers on Jozef, who 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, reflecting the Quay Brothers’ signature otherworldly style replete with decaying objects, antique puppets, murky lighting, and mysterious contraptions. Throughout the film, Jozef confronts various manifestations of his father, each representing different aspects of their relationship and his own psyche.
Quay Brothers, photographed by Maria Padró
Over the decades, the Quay Brothers have captured the imagination of other notable filmmakers, such as Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, and Guy Maddin. In 2015, Christopher Nolan directed the documentary Quay to celebrate their work. The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass further cements their unique cinematic legacy.
Tadeusz Janiszewski, Wioletta Kopańska, Andrzej Kłak, Allison Bell and Zenaida Yanowsky voice “Sanatorium,” produced by Lucie Conrad and Izabella Kiszka-Hoflik for Koninck Studios SpK Galicia and IKH Pictures Production. Viola Fügen and Michael Weber co-produce.
Oliver Weir said in our BFI London review, “This structural inside-outness is due in part to the film’s visual style, which, as with much of the Quays’ work, is rooted in German Expressionism. Every texture, every movement, every melody is suffused with weight and symbolism, and the characters are entirely subordinate to these elements: they have no internal state, no sense of being separate from their surroundings; everything they think or feel is externalized in the intricate sets, in the distorted shadows and monosyllabic close-ups, in the calligraphic swirls of smoke, and in the silver shimmer of their blurred faces. It is a haunting effect similar to the mood of Kafka’s The Castle in that it instills in every moment a pervasive ambiguity, an existential dislocation, which is never resolved and which never abates.”
Watch an exclusive clip below.
The post Exclusive: The Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Acquired by KimStim first appeared on The Film Stage.
