The Return of Franz Kafka: Our Faculty Featured in Agnieszka Holland’s Latest Film

About two years ago, you might have come across sophisticated lighting arrangements and actors in historical costumes in the hallways of our Faculty. Over two days, a film crew shot several scenes there for Franz, a new film from renowned Polish director Agnieszka Holland that maps the life and work of one of our most famous alumni – Franz Kafka. Franz premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival and the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. It was released for Czech cinemas on 25 September.

Kafka was not only the author of legendary literary works such as The Trial or Metamorphosis, but also a lawyer who worked as clerk in an insurance company after finishing his studies at the Prague Law Faculty. His double identity as a lawyer and a writer helped to shape his unique view on a world full of bureaucratic absurdity and existential questions.

We wanted to do a modern take on Kafka, so it is not a traditional biopic, but a kaleidoscope of different parts of his life. The film also deals with the present day, Kafka's influence on today’s young people, and the way his legacy is seen today,” says the film’s producer Šárka Cimbalová. “It is a rather punk-like presentation of Franz Kafka because Agnieszka Holland herself is a punk.” (laughter)

Holland, the holder of four Oscar nominations (Angry Harvest, Europa, Europa, In Darkness, Franz) and many major international awards, explains that if you want to understand this elusive writer who ordered his work to be destroyed after his death, you cannot just juxtapose his life and work–you have to look for him in fragments, puzzles, emotions, in a mixture of facts, presumptions, and concepts, and in his dreams, literature, and letters.

“Kafka has preserved his rock-star status for a hundred years now. There are dozens of detailed biographies, countless analyses, and tons of books on his life and work. But why do his fame and significance continue to grow after all these years? We know everything and nothing about him,” says Cimbálová.

The film’s original name was Looking for Franz. Cimbálová continues: “Kafka can be characterised by his elusiveness and complexity, but also by the way his work is read and how that changes in different eras. There is never any definitive reading, we keep on looking. And I want to stand beside him in his fierce battle with his father, with the world, and the unrealistic expectations and relentless requests from most of his closed ones, in his quest for love and a simple bourgeois life and the fear of that life. The sensory experience is absolutely crucial to the film. Kafka predicted the darkest of futures for the world, but there was more brightness and humour in him than most people realise.”

The primary purpose of our Faculty is, of course, to provide legal education, but it is also a place with a truly unique atmosphere, which can inspire and serve as a stage for exceptional works of art. With Franz, spectators from around the world will get a glimpse of our Faculty –in Slovenia, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Turkey, Island, and even Taiwan.

The Faculty turned out to be perfect for this film, which was shot in more than 57 locations. Each one of them had to be carefully prepared and adapted, while respecting the genius loci of the place. ”You hardly find anything original these days. There are no truly authentic locations left... You always have to adapt the setting,” says production designer Henrich Boraros, who collaborated on the film.

He says that the Law Faculty, however, offered something really special – an authentic environment which has preserved the atmosphere of Kafka’s times. In the film, the building serves at the insurance company where Kafka worked as a clerk, a place linked with responsibility rather than passion. This is where the story of a man torn between responsibility and art unfolds – a place characterised by law and bureaucracy.

“We did not make a traditional historical film... There is a lot of artistic exaggeration,” explains Boraros of his approach. The historically authentic premises combined with modern film-making methods created the ideal setting for telling the story of a man who was trying to find his own self in between administrative files and literary dreams. Boraros goes on to explain: “We wanted something that would, in a way, take the film out of the past... To make it more interesting for today’s audience.”

Director Agnieszka Holland works with Kafka with respect, but in her own special way. She believes that there is a little bit of Kafka in all of us, and this is the perspective she wanted to use to make the film accessible for today’s audience.

The film portrays Kafka not only as an author but as a multi-layered personality who struggled to find his own identity – these are topics that still resonate with today’s young generation. “You should definitely go and see the film in the cinema as you have not seen anything like it,” Boraros concludes.

Author: Zuzana Janáková
Edited by: Markéta Černá

Which other films were shot on the premises of the Faculty?

Designed by architects Jan Kotěra and Ladislav Machoň, the building started attracting filmmakers shortly after its opening. As early as in 1935, students acting in the film Studentská máma appeared on the stairwells and galleries of the building. In 1975, the entrance examination for the forestry school in the TV series My z konce světa was filmed on the premises. In 1990, scenes for the biopic about Karel Čapek Člověk proti zkáze were taken at the Faculty. Other films and series filmed at the Faculty include Taková láska (1959), Rodáci (1988), Master of Ceremonies (1996), Everyone Dies Alone (2004) České století: Den po Mnichovu (2013), The Devil’s Mistress (2016), and Volha (2023).

The building and its interiors have also attracted film crews from abroad. Foreign films which feature these premises include EuroTrip (2004), Foundation (USA, 2023), and Kampen om tungtvannet/The Heavy Water War (Norway, Czech Republic, 2015).