This year, Guillermo del Toro isn’t the only international filmmaker realizing a lifelong passion for a project. He offered us ‘Frankenstein‘, but at the same time, Agnieszka Holland gives us ‘Franz‘, which is her unconventional biopic of Franz Kafka. Holland’s connection to Kafka began when she was a teenager. At the age of 14, she devoured his short stories and ‘The Trial‘. What started as youthful curiosity grew into a lasting obsession, one that now shapes a film less like a conventional portrait and more like an intricate puzzle.
“Kafka has been a part of my life since I was 14, which was the first time I read his short stories, and then ‘The Trial’,” Holland states, although it’s hard not to sense that the director’s fascination borders on personal mythology. She speaks of him as paradoxical, meaning open yet elusive, and admits, almost wistfully, that she imagined taking care of him, as though she could protect the fragile man behind the literary legend.
Agnieszka Holland’s Restless Method Between Order and Chaos
Kafka’s presence shaped Holland’s early life choices, including her move to Prague to walk the same streets as the writer. But the city that she observes has transformed Kafka into a brand that is flooded with souvenirs, statues, and a museum catering to tourists. Kafka has become a tourist attraction, and after some point, the creator of Franz started to feel very annoyed by that. People can sense and understand where Holland’s frustration is coming from. After all, she holds a deep respect for Kafka’s complexity, clashing with the banality of cultural commercialization.
Her first serious engagement with Kafka on screen came in 1981, when she adapted The Trial for Polish TV. Holland found the experience deeply instructive as she saw that moment unfolding, which left her quietly proud of having captured something essential in Kafka’s work. Over the decades, her immersion in Kafka’s letters, diaries, and lesser-known works convinced her that the public had misread him. Franz was never a perpetually moody or a dark figure, and insists as she speaks about how Kafka was witty, sharp, and full of unexpected humor.
Holland was adamant that a traditional, linear biopic could not capture Kafka. Holland knew that a traditional biopic could never capture Kafka, since he never finished his novels, making it impossible to truly finish his story. Together with co-writer Marek Epstein, she assembled a narrative from fragments about love affairs, family tensions, minor works, and symbolic encounters and culminating in the two-day reception that transformed Kafka the man into Kafka the brand. As a viewer, you can almost feel her thrill in reconnecting these shards, even if the film sometimes struggles to cohere.
Holland is refreshingly candid about her approach, admitting she is not a scholar and never intended to teach anyone, though her method clearly reflects a restless creativity that produces as much chaos as insight.
Moments of Brilliance Amid Uneven Choices
The timing of Franz, a year after Kafka’s centennial, is almost ironic. Holland had deferred the project to make ‘Green Border’, a politically urgent film about the Kafka-esque refugee crisis at Poland’s border. For Holland, cinema is a tool for truth-telling, a way to respond to reality while it still matters. Watching Franz, it’s easy to see why her attention to detail is so intense, as scenes linger over handwritten letters and manuscripts, replicas of the originals, evoking Kafka’s presence amid Prague’s bustling museum, where visitors trample the past as if unaware of its fragility.
Yet for all its devotion, Franz often falters. Holland and Epstein’s screenplay painstakingly recounts Kafka’s life, his teenage readings, long-distance affairs, familial quarrels, and tuberculosis-driven death. But rarely offers new insight into his mind. Characters are flattened into archetypes, dialogue is frequently lifted directly from Kafka’s texts, and the film’s literalism leaves little room for emotional surprise.
But that is not all, as there are moments of brilliance in her work. The adaptation of In the Penal Colony is darkly comic, viscerally ambitious, and completely alive to Kafka’s unsettling wit. But these flashes are often lost amid absurd stylistic choices, which is a cherry dangling over a fallen Kafka, a bare tug-of-war scene, and anachronistic indie rock tracks that feel more distracting than daring. The film’s thematic ambitions, such as exploring Kafka’s Jewish identity or his struggles with intimacy, remain frustratingly underdeveloped.
Still, Franz pulses with sincerity. Holland’s reverence for Kafka’s genius is unmistakable. The film radiates passion and devotion, even if its maximalist impulses overwhelm its narrative. Watching it, you can sense the filmmaker’s love for the man and his work, even as the execution stumbles. Franz may be flawed, but it is never uninspired. Its energy, even in failure, sets it apart from more conventional biographical films, which is an ambitious, messy, heartfelt homage to a literary titan who remains, like Holland herself, an outsider looking in.
Franz made its debut at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and is now on the lookout for a distributor to bring it to audiences in the United States.
