cinematography
Bartosz Bieniek
editing
Quay Brothers
music
Timothy Nelson
Alfred Schnittke
sound
Joakim Sundström
Quay Brothers
production design
Agata Trojak (live-Action)
Quay Brothers
(Puppets Decors)

cast
Tadeusz Janiszewski
(Auctioneer and Voiceover)
Wioletta Kopańska
(Auctioneer’s Assistant, Chambermaid, Adela II)
Andrzej Kłak
(Józef, Chimney Sweep)

producers
Lucie Conrad
Izabella Kiszka-Hoflik
co-producers
Viola Fügen
Michael Weber
Tobias Pausinger
productions
Koninck Studios SpK Galicia
IKH Pictures Production
co-productions
The Match Factory
Adam Mickiewicz Institute
presented by
BFI
in association with
Telewizja Polska
with the support of
Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg

world sales
The Match Factory
info@matchfactory.de
www.the-match-factory.com

international press office
Zena Howard
zena@projectzah.co.uk

A ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line transports a son, Jozef, visiting his dying Father in a remote Galician Sanatorium. Upon arrival Jozef finds the Sanatorium entirely moribund and run by a dubious Doctor Gotard who tells him that his father’s death, the death that has struck him in his country has not yet occurred, and that here they are always late by a certain interval of time of which the length cannot be defined. Jozef will come to realise that the Sanatorium is a floating world halfway between sleep and wakefulness and that time and events cannot be measured in any tangible form.

2024 Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
2019 The Doll’s Breath (short)
2014 Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. (short)
2012 Metamorphosis (short)
2011 Through the Weeping Glass (short)
2010 Maska (short)
2008 Inventorium of Traces (short)
2007 Eurydice, She so Beloved (short)
2004 The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
2003 Songs for Dead Children (short)
2002 The Phantom Museum (short)
1994 Institute Benjamenta
1991 The Comb (short)
1987 Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (short)
1986 Street of Crocodiles (short)
1985 This Unnameable Little Broom (short)

“The film is an exploration of motifs and themes taken from the mytho-poetic writings of Bruno Schulz integrating both puppets and live-action to score the demiurgic nervature of Schulz’s 13th apocryphal month in the Regions of the Great Heresy. Framing the narrative is an Auction house in lesser times and an Auctioneer in his greatest moment. For public auction! Lot 47: a wooden Optical Box penetrated by seven lenses, with a skilfully hidden drawer purportedly containing the deceased retina of its original owner and said to liquefy once a year when positioned correctly in the Sun’s rays thereby anointing each of the seven final images and thus setting them into motion one by one. Within the Sanatorium’s labyrinthine corridors objects and events will roam with a force all their own. An eerie half-reality will set in, and Jozef will find himself caught in a disturbing web of memories, fantasies and visions to which he can only submit. He will find his Father, lose him in a dream, discover several at once, then lose him forever. Even Jozef himself will become multiple; one will die, another will be condemned to wander endlessly the Sanatorium’s corridors, and the last will board the very same train he arrived on.” (Quay Brothers)

The Quay Brothers studied at the Philadelphia College of Art, then later in London at the Royal College of Art. In 1980 they formed Koninck with colleague Keith Griffiths and since then have produced a hybrid collection of film work: puppet animation, documentaries, interludes, commercials, and installations. They have also designed decors for the Theatre, Opera and Ballet, as well as directing three live-action feature films. Many of their films have been inspired by the writings of authors including: Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Robert Walser, Stanisław Lem, & Felisberto Hernández. Music is key to their work and composers include: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Béla Bartók, Witold Lutosławski, Olga Neuwirth, Zdeněk Liška, Louis Andriessen, Timothy Nelson, Michèle Bokanowski and Alfred Schnittke. In 2012 the QQs were the subject of a grand retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York entitled Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets.