There is no straight line through the life of Franz Kafka.
FRANZ director and three-time Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland joins INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE for an extended conversation about Kafka and her bold, unconventional new film, a TIFF 2025 Official Selection.
Rather than trying to solve the mystery of Kafka, Holland enters it—moving through dreams, letters, loves, fears and contradictions to find the fragile, funny and fiercely determined man obscured by a century of mythology.
Past and present collide as Prague remembers Kafka, reinvents him and transforms a once-suppressed writer into a modern cultural brand. At the center is Idan Weiss, whose quietly affecting performance lets us glimpse the living man behind the literary icon.
Holland reflects on discovering The Trial as a teenager and coming to regard Kafka as an "admired brother"—someone she wanted, in her words, to bring out of the shadows and into color and light.
She also takes us inside the making of FRANZ: its restless, fragmented structure; the creative freedom that allowed her to approach the film like "quantum physics"; finding Idan Weiss; and the challenge of bringing Kafka's terrifying "In the Penal Colony" to the screen.
Along the way, Holland speaks candidly about Hollywood, the disappearance of ambitious middle-scale cinema and the artistic fearlessness she has found at this stage of her career.
What emerges is both a portrait of Kafka and a conversation about the elusive act of filmmaking itself—how we search for someone across time, how stories resist explanation and how mystery can sometimes bring us closer to the truth.
Join Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge for an intimate conversation with Agnieszka Holland about FRANZ.
FRANZ opens in U.S. theaters Friday, August 21, 2026.
Tickets, theaters and more information:
https://cohenmedia.net/product/franz
CHAPTERS
00:00 Agnieszka Holland on Kafka's Contradictions
00:24 Introducing FRANZ
01:51 The Conversation Begins
02:34 Kafka as Holland's "Admired Brother"
05:48 Searching for the Man Behind the Myth
08:56 Making a Film Like "Quantum Physics"
12:16 Creative Freedom and Filmmaking Without Fear
15:40 Hollywood and the Disappearing "Cinema of the Middle"
19:37 Why Kafka Is Frighteningly Relevant Again
19:47 Prague: From Banned Writer to Cultural Brand
21:22 Finding Idan Weiss
25:34 The Terror of "In the Penal Colony"
28:39 FRANZ Official Trailer
30:49 A Life Told Through Fragments and Puzzles
33:06 Creating an Epic Period Film in 40 Days
33:55 Building the Visual World of FRANZ
36:09 Did Making the Film Solve the Mystery of Kafka?
37:19 Remembering Andrzej Wajda
39:29 Where to See FRANZ
40:14 Closing
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