(Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, UK/Poland/Germany 2025, 75 min., DCP, Polish with English subtitles)
In the small world of contemporary stop motion animation, The Quay Brothers are the most legendary and revered figures. Known for their unsettling and haunted style, they have consistently been just outside the mainstream with such major admirers as Christopher Nolan and Terry Gilliam. Their third feature film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is an adaptation of a dreamlike novel-in-stories by Bruno Schulz, often called the “Kafka of Poland”. This is the second time the Quay Brothers are tackling Schulz’s material, as their adaptation of his only other book, The Street of Crocodiles, is their most famous short film. Sanatorium follows a man visiting his father in a dilapidated hospital, where memories and fictions mingle with reality in uncanny ways.