Franz Franz

A promising lawyer working in insurance, young Franz Kafka is newly engaged yet nearly bowed by the weight of his familial and professional obligations. Finding refuge in his passion for literature, Franz begins creating the surreal masterpieces that will ultimately win him artistic immortality, even as the world around him careens toward unimaginable conflict and illness threatens to cut short his own life. In present day Prague, the prescience of his great work is celebrated, even as his legacy is commodified in the ubiquitous Kafka-themed tourist trifles found across the city.

A lifelong student of Kafka, Polish master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland crafts a fittingly unconventional tribute to one of the 20th century’s literary masters, humanizing an icon and reflecting on his enduring international influence in this time-shifting cinematic portrait. Incisively exploring the young Kafka’s psychology and the forces that shaped him, the film delves into the root of his obsessions and peculiarities.