Franz

A compelling story inspired by the life, work and imagination of the writer Franz Kafka, who managed to be fascinatingly ahead of his time. Vegetarian, workaholic, introvert, outsider, lover in letters and clerk in nightmare. 

FRANZ is full of fantasy, humor, pain, and the inner world of a man who defined modern existential anxieties in his books, and who, a hundred years after his death, remains a mirror of our deepest fears and desires. Director Agnieszka Holland weaves a kaleidoscope of events from fragments, dreams, letters, and surviving stories into a sensually intense portrait of a man who never stopped searching for himself – and in doing so, touched something essential in all of us.

The film begins with Kafka's childhood in Prague and follows his life until his death in Austria after World War I. From his relationship with his authoritarian father to his strong friendship with Max Brod and his complicated love affairs with Felicia Bauerová and Milena Jesenská, a rich, emotional, often ironic, and sometimes grotesque fresco emerges of a man who, in his desire for an "ordinary" life, was able to write the most extraordinary works.