Screening as part of “Animation August“!

These are not your childhood cartoons. Celebrate some of the boldest and most visionary works in modern animation during Animation August at Enzian!

Launching the program is 2-time Academy Award® nominee Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow Trilogy (2016–2020), a profound and darkly funny meditation on memory, technology, and the fragility of the human experience. From Japan, Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game (2004) explodes onto the screen with fever-dream energy and unrestrained psychedelic imagination, pushing animation’s limits in both form and philosophy. Rounding out the lineup is Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024). 20 years in the making, this haunting new dreamscape from the Brothers Quay—masters of stop-motion surrealism—is a gothic, ghostly descent into the subconscious. Join us for a collection of films that promise to challenge, mesmerize, and linger long after the credits roll. Please note, this animation program is not intended for children and contains adult themes and content.

Unleash your inner “Ani-Maniac” and see all three films with a discounted series pass!

Sanitorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass:

In their first feature in 20 years, Stephen and Timothy Quay return to adapt the work of Polish writer Bruno Schulz with a mixture of stop motion puppetry and live action. 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 realize that the Sanatorium is a floating world halfway between sleep and wakefulness and that time and events cannot be measured in any tangible form.

About the Quay Brothers: Identical twins Stephen Quay and Timothy Quay, known as the Brothers Quay, are two of the most distinct filmmakers of our time. Their stop-motion animations have introduced a generation of viewers to a lyrical darkness not often associated with animation. Influenced by Central and Eastern European artists and writers like Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Švankmajer and Franz Kafka. Their work creates haunting, miniature worlds of uncanny puppets and atmospheric detail that reflects the dark psychology resulting from a century of industrial warfare, surrealist art, and dialectical politics.