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In their first feature-length film since 2005, Stephen and Timothy Quay draw once again from Polish writer Bruno Schulz, whose story “Street of Crocodiles” inspired their famous 1986 short film of the same name. Loosely adapted from Schulz’s novel Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the Quay brothers’ latest furthers their unmistakable style of stop-action that pays homage to the Czech and Polish traditions of puppet animation, set to an eerie original score composed by long-time collaborator Timothy Nelson.

The source material is a series of linked short stories, and while the title story supplies the film’s narrative backbone, the Quays fold in themes developed throughout the book. Entering...

Film Forum has revealed an official trailer for the film Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the first feature in 20 years by animation masters The Quay Brothers. This originally premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival last year, and also played at the London Film Festival. Presented by Christopher Nolan, who is a huge fan of these two eccentric filmmakers, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is a 75 minute feature mixing both live-action & stop-motion animation. It will be playing in cinemas starting at the iconic Film Forum theater in NYC starting at the end of August. A ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line transports a man visiting his dying father in a sanatorium to the edge of a mythic forest. Based on the book of the same name by Polish writer Bruno Schultz. Told in seven chapters corresponding with seven prophetic, mystical viewing lenses, the film bends objects,...

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...

Time, space and mortality work to no earthly schedule in the half-lit, hand-made twilight world of “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” — so it’s appropriate that this vertiginous stop-motion vision seems to operate by temporal laws of its own. The first feature film in nearly 20 years from cult animators the Quay Brothers runs just 76 minutes, though in the process of watching it, it feels both infinitely longer than that and over in the blink of an eye, like a dream of epic proportions that you forget seconds after waking. This dark, densely nested fairytale of life, death and what comes in between is inspired by the writings of Polish literary titan Bruno Schulz, but with entirely its own collapsing, free-form model of storytelling — driven less by logic than intuitive feeling and ambience, which is where the Quays’ distinctively ethereal visuals come in.

The opaque elusiveness of “Sanatorium” may frustrate viewers who,...

Animation veterans Stephen and Timothy Quay return to feature films — and to the works of Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz — with Venice premiere “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.”

Sold by the Match Factory, watch its exclusive clip here:

They discovered Shulz back in the 1970s; incidentally, that’s also when Polish filmmaker Wojciech Jerzy made a film based on the same story.

“When we visited poster designer Andrzej Klimowski in Warsaw, he introduced us not only to Schulz, but also his contemporaries Gombrowicz and Witkacy, along with the music of Krzysztof Komeda and Ewa Demarczyk,” they recall, mentioning other important Polish artists. The Quay brothers prefer to be quoted together.

“Suddenly, the world of Bruno Schulz materialized into our psyches and into our hands. It was particularly through his ‘Treatise on Tailor’s Dummies’ that we found an entry point into what animation could bring to the world...

After roiling a Polish village as an impostor priest in Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi,” star Bartosz Bielenia tries to rattle the entire nation in “Prime Time.” His character here is another malcontent, this one armed and ready to take over a TV studio on New Year’s Eve with a special message for the world. But he’s a bit too literally a rebel without a cause: We never discover just what this protagonist’s protesting gripe is. That lack makes director Jakub Piatek and co-writer Lukasz Czapski’s first feature a familiar hostage drama whose anticipated narrative raison d’etre is strangely Mia. The slick, watchable but ultimately somewhat pointless results, which premiered at Sundance six months ago, launch worldwide on Netflix June 30.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999 at a Krakow network affiliate, and despite the Y2K fears glimpsed on other stations’ broadcasts, just another night’s labor for the staff here.