Selected as Poland’s official Oscar submission, Agnieszka Holland’s bold and dynamic portrait of Franz Kafka finds a creative young man at odds with the world. Franz is torn between a stern father and the monotony of his job at an insurance company, and an overwhelming desire to write. What emerges is an author who transforms his lived experiences into a vision of a bureaucratic world that edges towards nightmare. Weiss excels as the young Kafka, Tomasz Naumiuk’s camera beautifully conjures up early 20th-century Prague.
