Agnieszka Holland on making Kafta biopic ‘Franz’: “We wanted to give him light and some punk infusion”

Agnieszka Holland attends TIFF in a dual capacity. On the one hand, the Polish writer and director is unveiling Franz, her playful biopic of Czech author Franz Kafka that is screening in Special Presentations and sold by Films Boutique.

Holland is also executive producer of her daughter Kasia Adamik’s Platform title Winter Of The Crow, a thriller starring Lesley Manville and Tom Burke, set just before the introduction of martial law in Poland in the early 1980s. HanWay Films handles international sales. The director confides with justi­fiable pride that she is sure she and Adamik are the first mother-­daughter combination to have world premieres at the same major international festival.

Kafka, played by rising German actor Idan Weiss, is known for his stories about metaphysical angst, but Holland found making Franz light relief after her previous feature, refugee drama Green Border, which won a special jury prize at Venice in 2023 but was attacked by right-wing politicians in Poland.

Franz is going on to screen at further international festivals including San Sebastian and Busan, and was made as a co-­production between Czech outfit Marlene Film Production, Poland’s Metro Films, Germany’s X-Filme and Bac in France.

When did you first read the novels of Franz Kafka?

I was 14 when I read The Metamorphosis and The Trial. It was an immediate fascination and since that time, Kafka is my brother.

Why does Kafka’s work still resonates today?

He wasn’t recognised while he was alive, but after the war there was a boom and he became one of the most important writers. He was considered to be visionary and prophetic and it was thought he somehow anticipated the [Nazi] gas chambers. He became the reference to many.

There were existential writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre who admired him, but so did the youth. He gave a new vision of the world with its absurdity and incoherence, as if it was a mystery that’s impossible to resolve.

Unfortunately, today, his vision of society, where law is arbitrary and the individual doesn’t matter, is very relevant. That is not a good sign. When Kafka becomes relevant, it means we’re living in a time when the rules are inhuman and are crushing us.

Is he a modern figure to you?

Yes, and he was very interested in new technology. Modernity was exciting for him. He was afraid of people, not technology. He would find his place among young people of our times. He behaved strangely sometimes.

Today, you would probably say he was neurologically atypical. Sometimes his reactions could be disturbing for ‘normal’ people, but in his own logic, he was right.

How do you hope audiences will react to Franz?

We tried to make a film that worked on many levels. It’s some kind of biography. It’s a portrait of a young and untypical man who is different from the mainstream.

When we screened the film to some groups, young people reacted very strongly. That encouraged me. I didn’t want it to address only Kafka lovers but also people who haven’t read him. Kafka’s character is considered as some kind of dark shadow, but we wanted to give him light — and some punk infusion.

Why did you decide not to tell the story in a chronological way? It is deliberately episodic.

His life and persona were not compatible with classic biopic dramatisation. It’s a risk when you’re using puzzles and fragments. It looks a bit like quantum physics in terms of putting together different realities. But I think it’s appropriate to his mind and his literature.

How did you find lead actor Idan Weiss?

That was the wonderful casting director Simone Bär. Idan was in the first batch of German actors she sent me, and it was pretty clear we had incredible luck to find him. He not only looks like Kafka but he also has his inner sensibility. I had the impression I had Franz Kafka on my set and so I had to deal with him sometimes very delicately. Unfortunately Simone died in January 2023.

After Green Border, was it pleasurable to make a film that didn’t create such controversy?

Green Border was a very intense experience on all levels. It was very satisfying but on the other hand, it cost us a lot of unpleasant attacks and hate. I had to fight with many people and many institutions — and I am still fighting.

When you make a film like Green Border, you can’t just abandon the subject because you complete your production. I’m still involved in activism around the migration issue.

Franz is much more private, much more playful. In terms of storytelling and style, it gave me a freedom I didn’t have since I was young.

And you will be alongside your daughter Kasia, who is showing Winter Of The Crow in Platform.

That project was supposed to happen before Covid. I tried to support the production, which was one of the most complicated I’ve ever seen, as much as I could — and I’m very happy it is selected.

It is set in a period you know well, during martial law in Poland.

Yes, I even made a film about it called To Kill A Priest [in 1988] in France. I was out of Poland promoting a film in Sweden when martial law was imposed by General Jaruzelski. Kasia was nine then, and she was [stuck] in Poland. It was impossible to leave the country or even to communicate. It was one

of the most intense experiences in her early life. We were separated for nine months.

You have The Rabbit Garden, a biopic of the writer Jerzy Kosinski, in the works. What else is coming up?

I’m at the age when I have to start thinking about some kind of retirement. If I do a next one, it will have to be dictated by some kind of urgency, like Green Border. I look around at what’s going on in the world and it would be irresponsible not to speak about it.

Do you have plans to direct more TV series following the success of productions including The Wire and House Of Cards?

I was lucky to participate in the best. It is difficult when you’re doing TV series and feature films at the same time. Europe gave me the opportunity to express myself through the cinema in quite a free way, which is much more difficult in Hollywood.

Series became a victim of their own success. There are so many, and so many platforms, that it’s difficult to follow. But sometimes you still have great things like Adolescence, which was a surprise to everybody.

I am open if an idea comes to me for a miniseries. But the regular series, no. I try to keep my energy for more personal tasks. 

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