10/02/2025 - One of Poland’s most successful artists has put a modern spin on a 1908 novel in a new film that he co-directed with Anka Sasnal

Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal (© IFFR/V Cornel)

Acclaimed Polish painter Wilhelm Sasnal – also behind We Haven’t Lost Our Way [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and The Sun, The Sun Blinded Me [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal
film profile] – takes on a 1908 novel by Robert Walser in his IFFR Big Screen Competition entry The Assistant [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Wilhelm Sasnal
film profile], co-directed with Anka Sasnal. But the story of a young man (Piotr Trojan) who becomes the assistant of a failing inventor (Andrzej Konopka) feels timelier than ever.

Cineuropa: I don’t know Robert Walser’s work, but I found out he’d worked as an inventor’s assistant, too. Were you more interested in his life or in his writing?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I work with the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, and back in 2001, they had this exhibition devoted to Walser. That’s when I really “met” him [Walser died in 1956]. The Assistant was probably the second book by him that I’ve read. I was curious about what his life looked like and about his personality, which seemed very interesting and rather dramatic.

There was a lot of sadness in his life, it seems, and there’s a lot of sadness in the film.
Walser lived on his own terms and bore the consequences. He struggled with mental illness, one of his siblings was sick and so was his mother. It was all covered in sadness. He spent the second half of his life in a psychiatric hospital, dealing with unhappiness and oblivion. He had only one companion, a publisher, who took care of him.

Walser published the novel in 1908; one can easily imagine The Assistant as a typical period drama. Still, this man’s situation is very modern. Is that why you move between decades?
I realised that he wrote about the uncertainty of tomorrow, about dependence on the employer – it’s all very modern. I remember reading a book about a copyist once. It reminded me of a place I knew in Poland, in my hometown, and I thought to myself: I can refer to the reality I know. Also, Joseph is the kind of guy who could easily jump from one job to another, as many do today, without knowing anything more permanent. When I think about my parents, for example, they used to know stability. Maybe I tend to overestimate it, but I grew up being told there’s value in work. You were employed, and the rhythm of your work would determine your life.

This relationship between the employer and his employee changes a great deal. At first, it’s clear who has all the power: it’s Tobler. Once he runs out of money, they’re more equal.
Tobler is this megalomaniac inventor, but there’s an emptiness behind it all. I think it has to do with the idea of masculinity: men are supposed to be strong, and they just hurt themselves in the process. Tobler wants to be successful and appreciated, he wants to be a real businessman, but he hurts himself because he decided to take on that role. They’re all dressed up in costumes, literally and metaphorically. When I was talking to Andrzej Konopka about the role, he said he wanted to defend Tobler. In our world, sometimes you have to accept that “more” isn’t always possible. He isn’t able to do that.

We often talk about characters being “likeable”. I am not sure if yours are, but it’s very easy to understand them.
I wanted them to be two-dimensional. In the past, I’ve always worked with Anka, my wife. Now, she co-directed the film, but for the first time, I was the one actually behind it. It was my job to listen to the actors, and Piotr Trojan actually told me to film his face. Before, I was behind the camera, and I used to think of our characters as figures in a landscape, which diminishes their position. I had to accept there’s more to it: there are all of these emotions. I like ambiguity in cinema, however. In the first film I made with Anka, there were barely any dialogues. Dialogue, to me, was something that felt artificial. I think that for dialogues to be alive, you need some acting “spark” that not everyone has.

Sometimes, they are necessary – it’s through dialogue that you notice the shift in their relationship. It’s almost funny how cheeky Joseph becomes at one point.
The previous film with Anka also had to do with a book. We read it and decided to adapt it, but it became obvious we were interested in completely different things. We just couldn’t agree on anything, so I gave up. I said: “Fine, I’ll be a DoP.” This time, when I was reading this novel, I would burst out laughing. Anka knew it as well, and she would ask: “Why are you laughing? It’s not funny at all.” We don’t share the same sense of humour, so it would have been impossible to write the script together. I really think this film was supposed to be a bit funny.

Speaking of funny, it made me laugh that your assistant scheduled an interview about The Assistant. Did this story make you think about the people in your own life?
It was tempting because Paweł is also Anka’s assistant. He’s taking care of the Polish part of our lives. Our situation is different from the Toblers’, but he’s not only someone who takes care of our professional life: he also takes care of our private life. It was certainly important to establish that our relationship is equal; there’s no hierarchy. So yes, I thought about it, but I didn’t take advantage of it.