The set pieces of Wilhelm Sasnal

Wilhelm Sasnal (b. 1972) is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in Poland. In paintings, films, photographs and illustrations that can be seen in museums around the world, including MoMA and the Tate, he often highlights political injustices and draws on images from mass media. His paintings in particular are distinctive for their stark colours and layered, swirling brushwork. In recent years, he has turned increasingly to film-making. His features, many of which are made with his wife, Anka Sasnal, include Swineherd (2008), a loose black-and-white interpretation of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen and The Sun, The Sun Blinded Me (2016), inspired by Albert Camus’s novel L’étranger (1942) and another of Anderson’s stories.

Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal’s latest film, The Assistant, premiered last month at Rotterdam International Film Festival. An adaption of a novel of 1908 by the Swiss writer Robert Walser, the film focuses on a down-at-heel young man, Joseph Marti, who is hired as the assistant to a tyrannical, delusional inventor, Karl Tobler, at his family’s lavish villa in the Swiss countryside. The film, like the book, is set in 1908, but the film-makers have incorporated modern elements too: one scene plays out like a dream-like club sequence, with dance music and strobe lighting, for instance, and there are several points where the characters refer to world events that happened after 1908.

As part of the film set, Wilhelm Sasnal painted copies and interpretations of famous artworks to be hung in the Toblers’ villa. These include a Braque-esque still life, one of Matisse’s portraits of his wife and even a copy of a sculpture from 1924 by the Polish artist Katarzyna Kobro. An exhibition of these works, ‘Painting as Prop’, was shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2024. After the screening of The Assistant in Rotterdam, Sasnal talked to Apollo over Zoom about the knotty relationship between painting and film-making.

Still from The Assistant (2025; dir. Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal). Untitled (after ‘The Green Stripe’ by Henri Matisse) (2023) by Wilhelm Sasnal is on the wall behind Tobler and Marti

How did the idea for the film come about and why did you want to adapt this novel in particular?

It started just over two years ago. I knew Robert Walser’s short novels already and as soon as I read The Assistant I was totally taken by it, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I very much liked the inconsistency of the main character. On the one hand he’s very obedient, but on the other hand he’s arrogant. I found it really funny. There is a certain lightness in it – I find Walser’s writing quite witty, though I know that the story behind this is rather sad.

I realised very quickly that I could adapt it into a film between eras, that moves between the past and present. I also think that the predicament of the protagonist, Marti, says something about the plight of many young people these days.

Were you trying to be faithful to the book?

In the parts that are set in the past, I was trying to be close to the novel. I tried to keep the dialogue as close to the book as possible. Of course, some parts sounded a little bit awkward, but as far as I could, I was faithful.

There’s an awkwardness, a stagey style, that comes from adapting an old book. At times it was a bit difficult on set – we were afraid that it was going to feel slightly obsolete. But, thanks to the scenes from the present times, I believe they are okay.

Still from The Assistant (2025; dir. Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal). In this scene, Joseph Marti hangs Untitled (after ‘The Smiths’ album cover) (2023) by Wilhelm Sasnal on his bedroom wall

One of the most notable features of the set are the artworks that are hanging in the house, which you painted yourself. Could you tell me about the relationship between your own painting and the film, and why you wanted to include those works?

This was the first film where I could feature my own artworks and lots of my own music. The previous films I made with Anka, my wife, they’re quite restrained. This is the first film where I wrote the script by myself and I decided I wanted to build these bridges between different disciplines. So I painted works that I thought this wealthy – or wannabe wealthy – family would have collected in order to show off.

The novel was written in 1908 so it overlapped with cubism – I think that was more or less the birth of modernity in literature and culture generally. That’s why I wanted to repaint the paintings of that period. I remember these paintings from my childhood, because my parents went to St Petersburg a lot in the 1970s and they brought back catalogues from the Hermitage. So these works got into my head. Of course, I didn’t want to make the paintings the main focus of the story, but they are in the background. I believe they are meaningful but in a subtle way.

Still from The Assistant (2025; dir. Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal), with Untitled (after ‘Absinthe Drinker’ by Pablo Picasso) (2023) by Wilhelm Sasnal hanging behind Frau Tobler

Do you see your film-making in artistic terms, as being painterly? Or are they very different disciplines?

For me these are completely different activities. My interest in film comes mainly from old films that I grew up watching, made by Polish film-makers: Andrzej Wajda, Wojciech Has, Kazimierz Kutz. When I first started making films maybe it was a bit like painting, and maybe I thought about it as capturing paint through the camera lens. But now it’s different. For me, the issues are important – getting deep into the topic, into the story, and that’s where the idea is born. That’s very different from my experience of painting. And, crucially, I’m totally independent in my painting studio, whereas on the film set I work with people.

Nevertheless, I do like the tension between the two disciplines. When I devote my time to filming, I miss painting, and the other way round. So I like this feeling of permanent incompleteness.

Are there any examples of paintings that you wanted to have in specific scenes? For instance, why did you want your huge Braque-like still life to be hanging behind the bed of Tobler’s wife? 

I was thinking about how cubism was about a kind of shattered reality. You can see the idea of reality reflected in the broken mirror. So on a superficial level, everything seems to be okay, but underneath that, the family’s reality is falling apart. That’s why I put this Braque painting above the bed in that scene.

Still from The Assistant (2025; dir. Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal), with Untitled (After ‘Still Life’ by Georges Braque) (2023) by Wilhelm Sasnal above the bed

How exactly did you go about copying the paintings?

At the beginning I was trying to make versions that were quite faithful to the original. But then after filming I wasn’t satisfied with some of the paintings, so I changed them a little bit and they ended up being less faithful.

I felt like the fact that they’re not exact copies but slightly altered adds to the unstable tone of the film, the sense of everything being out of joint.

Yes, and I think this process also links to my experience of film-making. If I could, I would go back and re-edit some of our previous films. With painting, you have unlimited access to the materials and you can change them. I do it quite often with my paintings, I dig out old works from storage and repaint them a little bit.

Untitled (After ‘Still Life’ by Georges Braque) (2023), Wilhelm Sasnal. Photo: Marek Gardulski; courtesy the artist/Foksal Gallery Foundation

How do these paintings, the copies you made for the film, relate in your mind to your usual way of painting? Are you in a different mindset when you’re making your own works?

In my own practice I often make versions or copies of works by other painters. I used to do that a lot. I was in quite a special mindset when I was making the paintings for the film because we were very short of time when we were preparing to make the film. So I made them quite quickly, and I saw it as a kind of exercise. I wouldn’t say it was dull, but it was quite functional: I was just making props for the film. But, because of that, I felt I needed to go back to them after filming, in order to make the paint denser, to make them more profound, more independent.

You had an exhibition of these paintings in Amsterdam. Was that exhibition conceived as part of the film, or was it just that you had these paintings and you thought that you may as well exhibit them?

I worked on this exhibition with Adam Szymczyk [curator at large at the Stedelijk]. He was the one who was really into Walser, and he even curated an exhibition about Walser back in 2001, which was when I really learned about him. So from the very beginning we were thinking about The Assistant, and yes, we knew from the beginning that the paintings from the film would appear in the show and that the show would be mainly about The Assistant.

Untitled (After ‘Dance’ by Henri Matisse) (2018), Wilhelm Sasnal. Photo: Marek Gardulski; courtesy the artist/Foksal Gallery Foundation

What is it like making films with your wife? How does the collaboration work practically?

It has its own dynamic. When we started working together, I would say that we were equally responsible for the scripts. But I became less interested in scriptwriting because I realised that she’s much better than me at it, and her need to build this whole world is more intense and more profound. For our next film we have decided that she will write the script, and I will be her cameraman.

There can be tension on set. When our roles are not clearly defined, we have arguments about how to cope with certain scenes. When we make the distinction between her position and my position on the set it makes the work easier. I’ve learned a lot from her in terms of working with actors and writing for the screen. I think she has lots of knowledge; the way I work is more intuitive.

What’s next for the film, and for you?

The film was screened at Rotterdam Film Festival in February. And we’ve been invited to a couple more festivals. There’s a festival in New York organised by MoMA and the Lincoln Center of new films by new directors.

We’re currently working on a film – it’s Anka’s film, and she’s writing the script at the moment. That’s another reason why we can’t work on scripts together – she’s quite slow, and her pace is very different from mine. I’m really excited because I think it’s a great script. It’s based on a Polish contemporary novel.

I had an idea for our next film recently. It’s still too early. I find it interesting to see how the idea seeded in my mind and how it’s evolving and that is so different to how I paint. With painting, though I can be quite scatterbrained, it feels more predictable for me. Thinking about and making films is a long process, it involves falling in love.

Wilhelm Sasnal photographed in 2020. © Marek Gardulski

The Assistant (dir. Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February.