20/12/2023 - The director is scheduled to start filming the much-anticipated “whimsical fictional docu-drama” in April 2024, with the premiere marking the centenary of the author’s death

l-r: Štěpán Klán, Šárka Cimbalová, Agnieszka Holland and Tomasz Naumiuk on the set of Franz (© Marlene Film Production)

UPDATE (20 Dec 2023): Polish director Agnieszka Holland is teaming up once again with Czech producer Šárka Cimbalová for the Franz Kafka biopic Franz, following their collaborations on the award-winning Charlatan [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnieszka Holland
film profile] and Green Border [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. The film is scheduled for release in 2024, marking the centenary of the famed author's death. Currently in pre-production with the movie, Holland is preparing for 40 days of shooting in the Czech Republic and Germany in April 2024. Polish DoP Tomasz Naumiuk (Green Border, Mr. Jones [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnieszka Holland
film profile]) has been tapped to lens the film. The role of the young Kafka has been given to ten-year-old Štěpán Klán.
“I would like to tackle the film as a sort of collage of scenes and stories from the life and books of Franz,” says Holland. “We are building the blueprint of a whimsical fictional docu-drama, in which nothing is impossible.”
“Kafka is perhaps the only author in the world about whom more has been written regarding his private life and personal experiences than about his work. He was a sensitive individual, an outlier in his era, akin to a man of the third millennium. Today, we stand a much better chance of understanding him than his contemporaries did 100 years ago. We aim to carefully piece together fragments of his life, striving to create a mosaic that transcends his life and delves into his persona,” says Czech producer Šárka Cimbalová, of Marlene Film Production.
Franz is being produced by Marlene Film Production (Czech Republic), and co-produced by X-Filme (Germany), Metro Films (Poland), Bac Films (France), Czech Television, Barrandov Studio, Certikon and CzechAnglo Production. The Czech Film Fund has supported the project. The domestic theatrical release is planned for late 2024.

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One of the most influential authors of the 20^th century is a German-speaking Jewish Bohemian whose larger oeuvre was left incomplete. The writer of The Metamorphosis, The Trial or The Castle, whose name is synonymous with surrealist and nightmarish visions, left a substantial imprint on literature and cinema alike. Despite the status of Franz Kafka, his life has been subject to a film adaption by Steven Soderbergh in 1991 in the French-American genre-bending noir thriller Kafka starring Jeremy Irons as the eponymous author. Now, acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland is attached to helm a new biopic under the title Kafka on the tormented artist's life and what has become of his legacy.

Holland joins the team behind the biopic about Czech healer Jan Mikolášek, Charlatan [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnieszka Holland
film profile], with Šárka Cimbalová of Marlene Film Production as the main producer. Their previous collaboration was the Czech entry for Best International Feature at the 93^rd Academy Awards and made the shortlist, and also received a European Film Award nomination and the Best Feature Film award at the Czech Lion Awards (see the news).

Marek Epstein penned the Kafka script, based on a story by Mike Downey and himself, which is a dramatisation of the writer's life from a cradle in pre-war Prague to his grave, in a series of standalone vignettes. “The film jumps forward in time to the fate of Kafka's sister, whose death he predicted, and to contemporary Prague where his influence today is stronger than ever,” note the producers.

According to the director's statement, Kafka's biopic will be less traditionalist compared to Charlatan, transcending the boundaries of a period film into the present times. Holland reveals that in order to understand the elusive writer who ordered his works to be destroyed after his death, they are going to piece together fragments from Kafka's past and oeuvre to create “a dazzling kaleidoscopic mosaic beyond not only his life towards the present but also to create a comprehensive view of the dramatic world of Kafka's imagination.” She then adds that they will be following the layout of “a mischievous fictional docu-drama in which nothing is impossible.”

The director elaborates: “Communist Czechoslovakia slowly and timidly began to return to his work in the mid-1960s, but then, during normalisation, his legacy was forgotten. That was until Kafka became a commercial tourist attraction and was memorialised by strange monuments. The fate of his books, his embarrassing loves, the relationship with his father, his failed engagements, his office work and tuberculosis are all well-documented in his diaries, letters, and many biographies. We know everything, but the secret of his fate and the influence his literature has on the world has never been fully revealed”. The shooting is planned to start in spring 2023 as 2024 will mark the centenary of Kafka's untimely death from tuberculosis.

The producers will be presenting the project, which is currently in development, at the upcoming Berlinale Co-Production Market.