CINEAST 2025

The Hourglass Sanatorium

Sanatorium pod klepsydrą Pologne 1973 / Wojciech Jerzy Has / vostEN / 119′ / digital / Cast: Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Irena Orska, Halina Kowalska, Gustaw Holoubek

►Cannes 1973 (Jury Prize)

In this hallucinatory adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s prose a man arrives at a sanatorium where time doesn´t seem to exist. Searching for his dead father, he wanders through a baroque dreamscape of memory and myth… Banned in communist Poland for its Jewish themes and historical allegory, the film was smuggled abroad without official approval and won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1973.

“Has’s is a world liberated from the obligation to explain itself. Or as Jozef says to his father, “Everything is muddled up. One needs such patience to find the right meaning in this tangle.” Wise words. The Hourglass Sanatorium has the picaresque linearity of a tone poem…” (theartdesk.com)

“…perhaps the true triumph of the film lies in the mise-en-scene and the cinematography … Throughout the film the sky changes from peach, to blue, to grey and the lighting shifts from being ominous, shadowy and macabre at one point to hallucinatory and alluring the next, all in a seamless and graceful manner.” (STARBURST Magazine)

Information and the full programme available from the end of September:

www.cineast.lu

Contact:

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Location: Cinémathèque @Cercle Cité