Overview: Twenty years after their last feature, the Quay Brothers return to the work of Polish author and visual artist Bruno Schulz (The Street of Crocodiles) for inspiration. A son’s visit to his dying father begins with a phantom train ride to a decaying, otherworldly sanatorium, where he experiences seven fragmented manifestations of a parental entity.

Applying their meticulously handcrafted, stop-motion puppet animation and musical sensibilities, along with moments of live action, they translate Schulz’s metaphorical language to the screen. The degraded sense of reality that the filmmakers admire in the writer’s work minimizes characters, narrative, and the spoken word, aspiring instead to a visualization of the metaphysical.

Presented by Academy Award Winning Filmmaker, Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Inception, Interstellar), Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass is otherworldly, anti-war statement of stark, macabre beauty.

Blu-ray Verdict: This film is one of those that strikes deep into the soul. It’s not just a philosophical animated horror. It’s a journey back to the life a father once stole. I’ve never seen a film so dark and yet so luminous at the same time.

It was told to me by a friend that during the screening of it at Stockfish festival in Reykjavik in 2025, three people walked out. The other hundred left ... changed. And having watched this film three times now, I can see why.

Sure, some of the so-called harder moments are gently amusing in their outlay, like the one with the little shoe (you’ll know what I mean when you see it), but maybe that was intentional. As for a setting, well, personally, I think the film is best watched at home, with tissues and a remote in hand - to pause, to catch your breath, to wipe away the salty, bitter tears clouding your eyes; to momentarily stop time and truly live through this fantastical experience.

This movie isn’t for everyone. But if you’re not everyone, you should watch it. There are lots of visual distortions, small specific loops of actions to a vacant rhythm. In fact, they are so effectively dreamlike that it might impair the film for you, but not all that much. There is a lot of optical effects that play with focus, create doubled ghostly images and distort things towards further unreality. But is that what your eyes are trying to focus in on ... or your brain trying to unpack all the free flowing imparted information? [N.Z.]

Bonus Features:
The Art Teacher from Drohobycz - Bruno Schulz by the Quay Brothers (Polish Cultural Institute in London)
Quay Brothers Q&A on stop motion animation (Courtesy Garden Cinema London)
Theatrical introduction by the Quay Brothers
Trailer

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Official Trailer)

Official Purchase Link