Wrocławska Fundacja Filmowa wrocff.com.pl

The Assistant

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Spektrum

In program

25.10.2026 / 13:00

Kup bilet

Directors: Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal
Script: Wilhelm Sasnal
Cinematography: Wilhelm Sasnal
Editing: Aleksandra Gowin
Producers: Wilhelm Sasnal, Ewa Przywara, Paweł Przywara
Cast: Piotr Trojan, Andrzej Konopka, Agnieszka Żulewska

Poland, United Kingdom 2025
124′
Screening with english subtitles.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with actress Agnieszka Żulewska and director Anka Sasnal.

Joseph Marti is an unremarkable bookbinder who quits his job when a supervisor shoves a badly-glued book in his face. Yet it seems that it doesn’t really matter whether he comes to work or not. Time is also irrelevant and shifts imperceptibly from the present to the past. Joseph is transported to an early 20th century villa in the suburbs where he is employed as an assistant to the inventor, engineer Tobler.

There he gradually becomes a factotum: he is placed in charge of the bookkeeping and the correspondence,
and gains the confidence of the lady of the house.
He obediently does everything he is told. It seems increasingly unlikely that Tobler will ever achieve his ambitious business plans.

​The family’s financial situation becomes desperate. In the face of growing tension in the Toblers’ marriage and the abuse to which he is exposed, Joseph decides to leave.

A caustic, deliriously inventive adaptation […] bringing a punk edge of anarchic surrealism, absurdist humour and experimentation to the period drama.

Carmen Gray, The Film Verdict

Wilhelm Sasnal and Anka Sasnal’s highly original, capriciously sumptuous adaptation of Robert Walser’s The Assistant…

Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film

The film’s most thought-provoking element is how the directors take the story out of the past…

Olivia Popp, Cineuropa

The Assistant’s premonition of how crazy the twentieth century was going to become so very early is a haunting one.

Chris Knipp, Chris Knipp’s Film Reviews

Staging the truth!
Staging the truth!