Interview with “Franz” Director Agnieszka Holland

Polish director Agnieszka Holland first came to my attention with her 1990 masterpiece Europa Europa, about a young Jewish boy during World War II who hides from the Nazis by joining the Hitler Youth, with nobody suspecting his true identity. She has remained on my cinematic radar ever since. Now, with Franz, she crafts a remarkable biographical portrait of one of the 20^th century’s most important writers, Franz Kafka, who died of tuberculosis in 1924, aged 40.

A native of Prague—then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic—Kafka is today inextricably linked with that city’s tourist industry. This is especially remarkable given how much the communist government of the former Czechoslovakia repressed his work, not to mention that Kafka, himself, asked his dear friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscripts upon his death. Though our protagonist became an unlikely literary icon, such lasting fame was earned on the merits of his indisputable genius.

Holland assembles a terrific cast, with the relatively unknown Idan Weiss in the lead. From start to finish, the movie is a treat. I saw it at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (check out my review), almost a year ago, and it has finally been released. Go watch it now. I had a chance to speak with Holland last week via Zoom, and here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity. I have also sometimes adjusted certain words to better fit American idioms, without changing the meaning of what was said.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: The first film of yours I ever saw was the 1990 Europa Europa. I found the ironic dissection of Nazi bureaucracy quite fascinating. Kafka often deals with how these twisted bureaucracies alter human nature. I’m wondering if you thought of Kafka and his writing at all while writing the script for that earlier film.

Agnieszka Holland: I have thought about Kafka since I read him for the first time at 14. And after that I followed what was possible to read about him and from him. So, my knowledge of Franz Kafka was pretty complete by the age of 22, 23. And I felt very connected to him with his vision of the world, which was shocking to me when I read it for the first time, because it wasn’t what was seen in the regular, realistic psychological novels, with its clarity and exactitude of description of the mystery of modern society, mystery and at the same time absurdity of modern society.

And of course, I was living in communist Poland and living in a country where laws had been arbitrary and authoritarian and the bureaucracy didn’t have rational reasons. We know that bureaucracy is something in capitalist states, as well, but in communist states and in totalitarian states, it has that logic which is so against humanity, which is so dehumanizing, that what Kafka described resonated with me.

And I think one of the reasons he became such a global writer after the Second World War was that his writing had been seen as some kind of prophecy, not only in communist states and not only in totalitarian Germany and other fascist states, but also in the regular democratic, capitalist states where the individual is reduced to some kind of manipulation by the machinery of the bureaucracy. But it was also different things, like something much more metaphysical or existential, about a man who is lost in the outside world and also in the world of his family, not only in the world of the institutions, and who is searching for some security and identity; but at the same time, he understands that he’s different and he doesn’t have security.

CLR: I read in the press notes that you studied in Prague and were there during the Prague Spring, which must have been quite an amazing experience. Poland is a country of great filmmakers. What made you want to go study in Czechoslovakia?

AH: I had wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 15. When I graduated from high school, Czechoslovakian cinema was very strong, maybe the strongest in Europe. You had the first movies by Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, Věra Chytilová and Jan Němec, and others of the Czech New Wave, and it was all so fresh and innovative, and at the same time, very realistic and absurd, very Kafkian, somehow, even if it was very much the little realism of Forman’s films, but with that dimension of the absurdity of human society. So it was formally very attractive; it was very innovative. The first film by Věra Chytilová, for example, Daisies, I think is one of the most genius examples of surreal cinema to this day.

And Polish cinema was in some kind of decline because of the political situation, which is always connected in those countries. And, also, my personal situation from the political point of view pushed me to look for luck in a different place. And Prague is the city of Franz Kafka and a magical place and I just wanted to go there. So I spent five years of my youth there, which were very formative years because I learned how to be a filmmaker and how to be a human being, what it means to be a citizen, and I also met my husband. So many, many things happened during those five years. And since then, Prague has stayed in my heart and is probably one of the most important places I ever lived in. 

CLR: And certainly it plays an important role in Franz. I love how this movie incorporates the vast modern-day tourist industry built around Kafka. Could you discuss your decision to bring that into the story, which mostly takes place in the past, but you do cut forward to the present a lot. And I love how you end with the museum’s voicemail telling the caller, “If you want a personal meeting with Kafka, say ‘Franz.’” It’s such a lovely ending.

AH: By the way, the voice that responds to that, saying “Franz”? That’s my voice. It was me who wanted that personal meeting, and the movie was made to have that personal meeting, somehow. During communist times, Kafka was not only unknown and not published in Czechoslovakia, but he was also considered some kind of bourgeois, degenerate writer. So, the knowledge of the average Czech or Slovak of his writing and of his life was very limited. And certainly he was not considered a Czech writer. His problem with identity was that he was never considered, in Prague, as a Czech writer, but as a German Jew, and in German as a Czech Jew. For the Jews, he was a bad Jew, so he was somehow no one.

CLR: And he wrote in German, correct?

AH: Yes, he wrote in German, but he had perfect knowledge of Czech. He was practically bilingual. And in the office where he was working, most of the communication was in Czech. And when I started to come to Prague again after the communists fell and after the market economy started to flourish, suddenly Kafka was everywhere because the Czechs realized that he’s like the real tourist GOAT, that he is the best-known Prague character, more than other writers. And he then became over-saturated, with museums, the names of streets, of cafes, of burgers, and then gadgets, endless gadgets, and also really nice places, monuments and so on. I was fascinated by that, of his life after life, how suddenly 80 years after his death he became some kind of brand and celebrity in the city where he’d been practically a totally obscure citizen. And I started to play with that.

And it’s not the satire only; it has many aspects. We can also say it’s fine that people know about Franz Kafka and maybe one of the hundreds of tourists who follow those tours will eventually buy his book and read it and will be influenced. So I’m not against it; I just think that it’s absurd, especially for a man who was so shy that he didn’t even want his writing to survive him. And suddenly he becomes a brand. And then, I started to think about his family and especially about his father, who was such an important figure in his life and in his writing, as well.

I thought that his father would be the happiest man on the planet if he went to the Prague of today and saw how valuable his son is. He was always worried and was sad that his son was good for nothing. But if he could see the success he could maybe create some kind of manufacturing to sell the objects and put the copyright on several things to make a sort of Kafka industry. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen because he didn’t come back, and the family of Franz that still lives in Prague—the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his beloved sister Ottla—they have no talent for business at all. They did not inherit their great-grandfather’s talent for business.

CLR: That is too bad. One of the things I love about the film is the cast. Where did you find Idan Weiss, who plays Kafka? He perfectly embodies Kafka physically, as we’ve come to know him, but also brings him to actual life; he’s not a character anymore, but a real person. I think he’s great.

AH: Well, the kid was just sitting in a corner and waiting for me, probably, because he was practically unknown in Germany, where he lives and works. And he was even close to quitting: he wrote to his agent a few weeks before the casting started to say that he had to think about a different kind of the career. He knew that he wanted to do something artistic; he also composes songs, he paints and so on. And our German casting director found him, somehow, and she recorded him and sent to me. And a week after that she died. Unfortunately, she was very sick. I didn’t know about it.

When I watched Idan’s video, I said, “It’s not possible!” And I shared it with my producers and everybody was like, “Wow, he not only looks like Franz, but he also has that shy goodness and at the same time some spark of humor.” So, the casting director didn’t answer me, and I became even a bit angry with her. But then I had the news that she died. She had prepared for me some other actors and different choices, but it was very clear that Idan was the one.

CLR: My image of Kafka, which was obviously a very incomplete one, was that he was very sickly. He died of tuberculosis. But here, he’s very athletic. You really emphasize that in the film. Were you consciously trying to present that side of him, aware that people might think of Kafka as this sickly writer?

AH: He was actually like that. And I think the stereotype is too easy that he’s just a thin, skeletal, crooked person hiding in the shadow. He was funny, he was physical. He was interested in his body, for sure. He was interested in sexual intercourse, even if it was difficult for him, psychologically. His problem was his brain, the fact that he didn’t feel that he fit enough into the work. He wrote someplace one sentence which struck me when I read it for the first time that “my brain found agreement with my lungs behind my back.” So certainly it played an important role, some kind of escape.

CLR: Obviously, everything would be different if Max Brod, Kafka’s friend, had not ignored Kafka’s final wishes to destroy his body of work. It’s really strange to think about this and how he didn’t want his work published and yet Max Brod refused to honor that. I have a complicated reaction to that. How do you feel about Brod’s decision? Obviously you love Kafka’s writing, but …

AH: I’m glad we have it. So, from the selfish point of view, I am absolutely grateful to Max Brod. But that request came when Kafka was very sick, practically dying. So we are not sure if in a different situation he would have had the same wish, because he wanted to be published. He had problems finishing the longer works. The novels are practically unfinished, even if I think that they end perfectly. And he had plenty of opportunity to destroy his manuscripts when he was alive. Why didn’t he do it and why did he put such a burden on the shoulders of his best friend and the beloved woman, Dora Diamant? Because he also asked her and she actually destroyed some writing. So, I’m not sure if he wanted it really. I don’t know.

Anyway, he knew the value of his writing and there are some little proofs of that. One, I discovered just very recently, in the Oxford Library where they have several manuscripts of Franz Kafka. They showed them to me, the originals, which they rarely take out. The librarian is Polish, also, so that might be one of the many reasons why I was offered the possibility to see it like that. And one page of his journal was totally blocked by dark ink; he was hiding something he wrote, not that he just underlined it or writing, but he didn’t want anyone to read it. But with modern technology, they’ve been able to read it. And he wrote, “It’s not in doubt that I am the most intelligent person living in Prague.” And another sentence like that which he didn’t hide was, “Any sentence I write is perfect.” So he wasn’t so modest. (laughs) He knew his value.

CLR: I want to thank you very much for making the movie and for talking to me. I hope everyone gets to see the film now that it’s coming out.

AH: Thank you, Christopher. Be well.

CLR: You, too.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.