Karlovy Vary Festival retrospective of Franz Kafka film adaptations

The Karlovy Vary Festival will pay tribute to one of the Czech Republic’s most famous sons with a retrospective of film adaptations of the work of Franz Kafka from some of the greatest names in cinema. To mark the centenary of Kafka’s death, the festival will screen a series of films directly adapted from, or inspired by, the literary master of angst.

The retrospective will include such classics as Orson Welles’s The Trial (1962), Martin Scorsese’s Kafkaesque New York dramedy After Hours (1985) and Federico Fellini’s Intervista; Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka (1991) and its 2021 re-edit Mr. Kneff — both starring Jeremy Irons as a set-upon insurance man and writer — alongside lesser-known adaptations, including Jan Němec’s Metamorphosis, a German TV movie version of Kafka’s famous short story. Other highlights include Ousmane Sembene’s Senegalese feature The Money Order (1968) and Kôji Yamamura’s animated short Franz Kafka’s a Country Doctor (2007).

“For decades, Kafka’s oeuvre has functioned as a continuing provocation to filmmakers,” said Karlovy Vary artistic director Karel Och and festival consultant Lorenzo Esposito, co-curators of the retrospective. “It is as if he were slyly challenging them to attempt to capture as authentically and intensely as possible the elusive nature of his formulations, of his narratives, of the realities he has crafted and the feelings of apprehension he elicits, yet also of the comic situations he has created.”

The 58th Karlovy Vary festival, which runs June 28–July 6, will present acclaimed casting director Francine Maisler (Dune, Tree of Life, Birdman) — in 2021 The Hollywood Reporter‘s inaugural casting director of the year — with a special prize for her life’s work, and honor Czech actor Ivan Trojan (Charlatan, Burning Bush) with this year’s president’s award for outstanding contribution to Czech cinema.

Karlovy Vary will unveil its full festival lineup in the coming weeks.