Polish writer and director Agnieszka Holland discussed her new biographical film Franz, about author Franz Kafka, at the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Monday, saying the movie tries to uncover the “essence” of the novelist and explores themes that are still topical, including Kafka’s thoughts on the dangers of totalitarianism.
The filmmaker unveiled the trailer for the movie, starring German actor Idan Weiss, before talking about the creative process of the film. The cast also includes the likes of Jenovéfa Boková, Peter Kurth, and Ivan Trojan. Holland wrote the script for the co-production between the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France, with Marek Epstein (Charlatan), with Mike Downey serving as executive producer.
Holland has in the past described how she feels about Kafka as akin to a brother since reading him for the first time at age 14. “He stayed with me as writer, an artist, a prophet,” she explained on Monday. Holland also recalled living in Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia, sharing that “what was Kafkaesque was the everyday reality of these countries, of these regimes.”
She also suggested that Kafka’s “triple identity” spoke to her as a “half-Polish, half-Jewish [person] living in a strange antisemitic Communist country.” Holland also emphasized that Kafka was “practically forbidden in Czechoslovakia except for short periods” under the Communist regime.
After the fall of communism in what is now the Czech Republic, “in the 21st century, slowly, Kafka became the biggest public tourist attraction and the brand for the [various souvenir] gadgets, frankly,” the filmmaker argued. In that context, the goal of Franz is to come closer to an answer to the question of “what is the essence of Kafka, and how much that essence has been buried underneath the popular culture.”
The film uses “an associative structure, more than a linear” narrative structure, she also told reporters.
Holland highlighted that the themes in the film, such as living with a patriarch, “the prison of the family,” the “impossibility to communicate” and Kafka’s “fear of close identity,” meaning his unwillingness to choose a single one of his varuous identities, are still current and topical, as is his “fatalism and pessimism about humanity” and “his vision of the dangers of the future of totalitarian society, which is reducing the individual to a non-important, negligible part.”
The star of the movie also briefly discussed his portrayal. Asked about becoming Kafka, Weiss said: “He was in my body for a long time, and he came out.” The actor even locked himself into his apartment in Hamburg for two months and only went out when it got dark to get a feeling of and for darkness, the actor shared. What is a core Kafka quality? “Franz for me is sensitivity,” he shared.
Meanwhile, Downey highlighted Kafka’s “rock star status.”
Honoring the celebrated Czech writer with a retrospective last year, the centenary of his death, KVIFF highlighted how filmmakers the world over have long been inspired to either adapt his works outright or make movies that are “Kafkaesque,” meaning that they are filled with the kind of angst, alienation and absurdity that made the novelist one of the most prominent and distinctive figures in 20th century literature.
KVIFF runs through July 12.