Movies Boutique has reunited with “Inexperienced Border” director Agnieszka Holland on her Franz Kafka biopic “Franz,” at the moment in pre-production.

Set to start principal images in April within the Czech Republic and Germany — throughout the centenary of the creator’s dying — the movie has already been acquired for theatrical distribution by Bac Movies Distribution (France), X Verleih (Germany), Bioskop (Czech Republic) and Kino Świat (Poland).

Newcomer Idan Weiss will play Kafka, whereas Jenovefa Bokova limns Kafka’s pal and translator Milena Jesenska with Maria Schrader as his mom. Peter Kurth, Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz and Gesa Schermuly spherical out the forged. Cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk — additionally behind “Inexperienced Border” and Holland’s “Mr. Jones” — will lense the movie.

“It’s very thrilling to proceed the collaboration with Agnieszka and the entire group following the success of ‘Inexperienced Border,’” stated Jean-Christophe Simon, CEO at Movies Boutique, forward of the movie’s bow on the European Movie Market. “‘Franz’ will probably be one of the thrilling European movies to return and it clearly has a really robust worldwide enchantment. Having the lifetime of one of the well-liked and fashionable writers of the twentieth century tailored on display by a visionary filmmaker, similar to Agnieszka, appears like a cinephile dream.”

Not too long ago awarded in Venice for “Inexperienced Border,” Holland isn’t any stranger to tackling real-life icons, similar to poet Arthur Rimbaud in Leonardo DiCaprio starrer “Complete Eclipse” or composer Ludwig van Beethoven in “Copying Beethoven.”

“Franz,” written by Marek Epstein and Holland, will cowl the author’s life as a “kaleidoscopic mosaic,” beginning together with his start in nineteenth century Prague via to his dying in Berlin after the shut of World Warfare I.

“Kafka was a person of nice sensitivity and ill-suited to his time,” she says. “We’ve a a lot better probability of understanding him at this time than his friends had a century in the past. He was the soul of the third millennium: a person dwelling mentally largely outdoors the fact of his physique, dwelling on this planet of letters as intensely as at this time’s man resides his life on social networks.

“To know Kafka, we wish to rigorously piece collectively fragments from Kafka’s previous and creation to create a mosaic past not solely his life towards the current, but in addition to create a complete view of the dramatic world of Kafka’s creativeness.”

Kafka, a German-speaking Jewish Bohemian well-known for surrealist and nightmarish visions, was behind such enduring works as “The Metamorphosis,” “The Trial” and “The Fort.”

“Franz” is produced by Sarka Cimbalova for Marlene Movie Manufacturing and co-produced by Czech Anglo Manufacturing (Kevan van Thompson, Czech Republic), X Filme Artistic Pool (Uwe Schott and Jorgo Narjes, Germany), Metro Movies (Marcin Wierzchosławski, Poland), Bac Movies (David Grumbach, France), Czech Tv, Barrandov Studio and Certikon in affiliation with Movies Boutique.

Chairman of the European Movie Academy Mike Downey and Daniel Bergmann function government producers.

“The essential and field workplace success of ‘Inexperienced Border’ is driving unbelievable curiosity in ‘Franz’ from distributors and funders throughout Europe,” notes Cimbalova. “It’s nice to carry again the profitable manufacturing, gross sales and inventive group that introduced us each ‘Inexperienced Border’ and ‘Charlatan’ within the final years. It’s the high quality of this intensive collaboration that has helped us to determine the mission within the worldwide consciousness and to search out attention-grabbing overseas companions who’ve been contacting us nonstop for the reason that mission was introduced.”

Regardless of having sparked controversy in its native nation, Holland’s earlier movie has earned $3.5 million in Poland alone and received an Viewers Award at IFFR in February. Extensively distributed, it opens in France on Feb. 15.

“The worldwide worth of brand name Kafka is incalculable and invaluable,” provides Downey, calling the author “one of many only a few literary names to enter into frequent parlance.”

“The Kafka trade is just not merely associated to Prague and the issues that bear his title in a crass, business means. Individuals pay for ‘the Kafka expertise’. You may see a market penetration of the model above and past lots of the latest biopics we now have seen, however we should admit that Kafka has maintained his world rock star standing for a century now and it reveals little signal of waning.”

As Holland tells Selection, “We all know the whole lot and nothing about Kafka.”

“There are dozens of detailed biographies, numerous analyses, tons of books about him. And the explanations for his rising significance and his persona stay a thriller. I’m making an attempt to place this movie collectively like a scattered jigsaw puzzle.”

She observes: “What I do know is that I very a lot wish to seek for him and comply with his traces. I additionally know that I can’t inform his story in a traditional, linear, classical means. Such a story would betray the extra profound fact about Franz.”

As an alternative, the filmmaker will search for her protagonist in “shards, riddles, emotions, in a concoction of information, assumptions and creativeness, in his goals, his literature and his letters.”

“I wish to stand subsequent to him in his fierce combat together with his father, with the world and the relentless expectations and calls for of most of his family members, in his eager for love and abnormal, bourgeois life and his concern of it. The sensual dimension of the movie is crucial to me. Kafka predicted the world’s darkest future, however there was extra brightness and humor in Kafka himself than individuals often suppose.”