Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
With an international cast and crew, Agnieszka Holland brilliantly interprets the life, writings, and impact of Franz Kafka as “Kafkaesque”.
By Nora Lee Mandel
Franz
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Written by Marek Epstein and Agnieszka Holland
Cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk; Editor Pavel Hrdlička
Produced by Šárka Cimbalová and Agnieszka Holland
127 mins. Czech Republic/Germany/Poland. Not Rated.
With: Idan Weiss, Peter Kurth, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz, Carol Schuler, Sandra Korzeniak, Marta Dancingerová, Karel Dobrý, Gesa Schermuly, Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan, Jenovéfa Boková, and Anita Krausová
Release in U.S. theaters on August 21, 2026 by Cohen Media Group
With a large international cast and crew, Agnieszka Holland’s brilliantly interprets the life, writings, and impact of Franz Kafka. In the script she co-wrote with Prague native Marek Epstein, there are hints at what an alienated anomaly Kafka lived as he spanned the 19th, from 1883, into the 20th centuries: born in the Austria-Hungarian Empire that ceased to exist after World War 1, a German-speaker/writer in Prague amidst Czech nationalism, and as a non-observant Jew.
This Kafka is preternaturally played by German actor Idan Weiss, who frequently breaks the fourth wall looking into the camera as a future audience. He sees women as support and solace from his bullying, tyrannical father, in many flashbacks to his childhood and into his adulthood. His father Hermann (volubly played by German actor Peter Kurth) becomes a fascist symbol looming over his work, including two stories scarily dramatized/described in the film by Franz (In the Penal Colony and The Judgement).
His sister Ottla (played by German actress Katharina Stark), included in the poster above, is Holland’s proxy, as she saw herself as his protective sister when she left Poland as a teen to study in his Prague hometown, as the Communist government suppressed his “bourgeois” books. (Ottla and their sister Elli, here played by Czech actress Marta Dancingerová, also figure in the more romantic fictionalized version The Glory of Life (Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens).) Ottla constantly defends him and his time spent writing to their ever-berating father. Their mother Julie (played by Polish actress Sandra Korzeniak) is torn between her earthy, businessman husband and fragile, intellectual, possibly on-the-spectrum son, and is haunted by the early deaths of who would have been his two older brothers, snapped in Victorian-era memento mori portraits.
While his father is seen at Yom Kippur services, Franz shares with his sister his fascination for experimental Yiddish theatre, despite his lack in that language. He takes her to see his Polish friend Jizchak Löwy as a character identified as “The Traveller” (played by Czech actor Josef Trojan) and a very physical expressionist piece by the fictional “Pfohl”, mesmerizingly performed by Czech actor Karel Dobrý. Influenced by this avant-garde, Franz reads his stories and novel excerpts to sometimes shocked audiences as comedies.
Franz tells only his friend and promoter Max Brod (played by German actor Sebastian Schwarz) of his plan to marry Brod’s chatty Zionist cousin Felice Bauer (played by Swiss actress Carol Schuler), seen above with him. Brod confides to his practical wife Elsa (played by Czech actress Anita Krausová) that his friend is finally finishing some pieces; Elsa seems like the one who will get them past Nazis to Palestine with Kafka’s oeuvre. (Not mentioned is the resulting “Kafkaesque” litigation.) Franz announces he is leaving home, to much familial sturm und drang, so he is relieved to move into silence. Ottla excuses him to the camera about their years-long engagement: He could only love her on paper when she was secret. But when they saw each other, he got terrible headaches. His fear of being watched comes to life in a fast-forward where Prague capitalizes on their previously ignored literary icon with interactive exhibits, endless kitschy souvenir shops, and walking tour guides’ satirical spiels. The director lingers over David Černy’s kinetic Kafka's Head outdoor sculpture near Franz’s day-job insurance office for embodying his insecurities and thoughts.
When Felice turns from talk of her latest reads to domesticity, he turns to writing to her witty, flirtatious best Berlin friend Grete Bloch (played by German actress Gesa Schermuly). Their epistolary relationship dooms his earlier one. Franz is surprised that Ottla challenges their father by marrying a non-Jew, yet he too will move on to a gentile, the sensual wife of a friend, translator Milena Jesenská (played by Czech actress Jenovéfa Boková). From letters to her, his obsession with individual words crashes into the quotidianness of a telegram clerk.
Tuberculosis overtakes him, and his life goes from one sanitarium to another. Holland makes us feel both the intimate pain of the seemingly sadistic treatments and the social freedom of endless nude calisthenics. Tourists of the future will be there too. As he seemed to anticipate, there are ominous flash forwards of his family’s deteriorating conditions after his 1924 death.
I have to admit that I’m not sure if, besides a few other stories, I have read what are considered Kafka’s masterpieces The Castle, The Metamorphosis, and The Trial. But his work has so permeated the century since they were published and translated that the film’s frequent images of insects and bureaucratic hallways have knowing resonance. Holland fulfills her insightful capture of the essence of “Kafkaesque” as the museum automaton drones: To talk to Kafka, press…
Note on Franz’s uncle the dentist at: Franz
8/21/2026
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
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My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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