“Agnieszka Holland Has Never Shied Away from Dificult Subjects. The Polish Filmmaker, A Three-Time Oscar Nominee (Angry Harvest, Europa Europa, In Darkness) and Winner of Venice’s Jury Prize for Green Border, Has Built Her Career. Oppressive Systems. Her Latest, Franz, Takes on One of the Ultimate Outsiders: Czech Writer Franz”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
Her Latest, Franztake on one of the Ultimate Outsiders: Czech Writer Franz Kafka. Far from A Conventional Biopic, The Film Mirrors the Disjointed Nature of Kafka’s Life and His Cryptic Prose. Holland Construts a Fragmented, Kaleidoscopic Portrait That Blends Real Episodes with Kafka’s Fiction and his HIS Strange Afterlife as Both Cultural Prophet and Commercial Brand.
For Holland, The Project Is Personal. She First Encounted Kafka As A Teenager and Later Adapted The Trial For Polish Television in 1981. Decades Later, She Still Sees Him As A “Fragile Younger Brother,” A Writer Whose Vision of Dehumanization Feels More Urgent Now. With Idan Weiss As Kafka and Peter Kurtth as His Father, Franz Marks Holland’s Most Ambitious Attempt Yet to ReintDroduce Kafka to A New Generation.
Franz HAD ITS World Premiere As A Special Presentation at Tiff and Will Screen in Competition at San Sebastian. Films Boutique is Handling Worldwide Sales.
Holland Talked to Thr About the Lasting appeal of Kafka, Casting HIM, AND WHAT’S NEXT.
What Draws You to Kafka’s Writing, and Who Is He Still Relevant Today?
The existential diactial dimension of kafka’s writing have been important to me, as well as questations he asks without response: What are the rules that govern orm, phylitic. religious? His work is Cryptic, WHICH MEANS EVERY Generation Can Read Him Differently. That is whoh he have remained so relevant. In Fact, I Think He Is More Relevant Today He Was 20 or 30 Years Ago, Because We Are Once Again Facing The Kind of Dehumanization He Foresaw in the 1930s and 40s.
Kafka have also been deeply personal for me. Studying in Prague, I TRACED HIS FOOTSEPS. In 1981, i adapted The Trial For Polish Television, WHICH WAS ONE OF The MOST Exciting Intellectual Tasks of My Career. I’ve Always Felt a personal Connection – AS IF HE WERE A FRAGILE YOUNGER BROTHER I HAD TO PROTECT. With FranzI Wanted to Find a Cinematic Language that would capture that feeling and present him in a way that speaks to a new generation, many of what kind of experience the Same ALIENATION HE DID.
WHEN YOU WENT BACKA FOR KAFKA FOR THIS FILM, DID HE MEAN WHATING DIFFERENT TO YOU THAN WHEN YOU FIRST READ HIM?
I TRIED TO RECONNECT WITH The FEELINGS I HAD WHEN I FIRST Discovered Him As A Teenager, Before His Image Was Buried Under Layers of Interpretations, Scholarship, And Tourist Kitsch. Kafka Became A Brand, Even A Tourist Attration, and His Real Humanity Was Hidden. I Wanted to Revive My Original Sense of HIM – WITHOUT PRETENDING I CAPTURE THE Full Truth. Kafka Always Escapes Interpretation. WHENEVER YOU THINK YOU’RE NAILED HIM DOWN, HE SLIPS AWAY. That Mystery Was Important to Preserve in the Film.
Did that also Impact Your Stylistic Approach?
YES. I KNEW I COULDNN’T MAKE A Traditional Biopic. Kafka’s Life and Work Are Fragmented, So The Film Had to Be Fragmented Too – Pieting Together Shards of His Fiction, His Letters, and His Lived Experience. That Approach Allowed Me to Rediscover the Freshness of My Early Connection to HIM.
Agnieszka Holland
WHY DOES KAFKA Resonate so Strongly with Young People Today?
Because he expterses what many now feel: a Sense of Being Different, of Struggling to Communicate Directly, of Being Alienated by Systems – Family, Work, Society – Taty -Tatya. Incomprehensible. Kafka’s Search for Freedom from Those Forces, and His Neuroatypical Sensiness, Speak to the Experiences of Today’s Youth.
How did you Cast Idan Weiss As Kafka?
He was Practically Unknown, A Young German Stage Actor, But Simone Bär, Our Brilliant Casting Director, Spotted HIM IMMEDIATELY. From the beginning, it was Clear he was franz. Noty Physically or Because He is Jewish, But Because of His Sensiness – HIS Strangness, His Humor, His Apartness. He Trly Seemed to Carry Kafka’s Soul. AT Times, It Was Dificult Because He Thounga in Ways Different from The Film Crew, But I Came to See That As Essential. Without Him, The Film Wuld Not Feel True.
WHAT Wuld Kafka Make of Being A Tourist Attration and Global Brand?
He would be terrified. HE HAD NO NARCISISTIC DESIRE FOR FAME. He Wanted His Writing to Be Recognized, But In Mystery. At the Same Time, He Had A Great Sense of Humor, SO HE MIGHT FIND SOME OF IT Absurdly Funny. Still, I Think The Commodification of His Name and Image would have Horrified HIM.
Kafka’s Humor is ofnten overlooked. WAS IT SOMETING YOU RECOGNIZED FROM The BEGINNING?
YES. I KNEW IT FROM The START. His humor is Dark, Painful, But Very Present. It was Important to Include that in the Film.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO STAGE HIS Short Story In the Penal Colony ratther than, say, The Metamorphosis or The Castle?
IT WAS BOTH The Easiest of His Stories to Visualize and, For Me, The Most Prophetic. IT exposes the absurdity of Instituteized Cruelty. Readers After the Second World War Recognized How Kafka Had Foreseen the Cold, Legalized Violence that Defined the 20th Century. Sadly, I Think We Are Living Through A Return to That Logic Now, And I Wanted Those Images in the Film Because They Reflect What We Increatingly See in the News.
WHAT Wuld Kafka Say about the State of the World Today?
I ironic that he Died Before Hitler, Since He Anticipated the Horrors that Were Coming. His Family Lived Through What He Foresaw, But He Espated It. I Think If He Faced Today’s Cynical Violence – Wars, Political Brutality, Dehumanization – He Wuld Not Fight. Kafka wasn’t a survivor at any cost. Even with his Illness, he seized to surrender ratioer than struggle. Faced with Our World Today, I Think Huld Simplad Disappear.
DID MAKING THIS FILM CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON KAFKA?
IT DEEPENEned My Connection. The Process Revived My Original Feelings for HIM AND GAVE ME A New Stylistic Freedom. The Film ConfirMed for Me That Kafka Cannot Be Told in A Linear Way. His TRUTH EXISTS ONLY IN FRAGments, In Pieces.
What’s Next for You?
Probably a film about jerzy kosiński, the polish-american writer who was a great celebrity in the US before being disgraced and who committed suicide in 1992. Relevant – ABUT TRUTH AND FICTION, FAME AND CANCELATION. In some Ways, he was a kind of spiritual grandson of Kafka, Thought with a very Different, More Narcissistic Character.