The Cinematheque

“Holland takes a puckish delight in showing how this introverted, neurasthenic perfectionist has become an icon in modern-day Prague.”

Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

A year after his centenary, Franz Kafka remains an ageless, inexhaustible influence on modern thought and art. Director Agnieszka Holland, as a follow-up to her acclaimed (and highly controversial) Green Border, has channelled a variety of impulses and formal approaches into her own version of Kafka. Like the film’s title suggests, Franz is about the person more than the texts. We see the writer’s biography—his family members, illnesses, and literary rivals—and even, in some scenes, his popular image as a merchandised personality in present-day culture. Where, in all of this, can we truly know Franz Kafka? His work has been adapted by directors as different as Orson Welles, Straub-Huillet, and Michael Haneke; likewise his personal life, played by newcomer Idan Weiss, is for Holland something thrillingly enigmatic.

In German and Czech with English subtitles

“Holland—who studied in the former Czechoslovakia, witnessed the Prague Spring of 1968, and was imprisoned for supporting the local dissident movement—brilliantly surmounts the framework of a standard biopic.”

Dorota Lech, TIFF