Name: Kafka
Released: 2024-03-24T00:00:00.000Z
Cast: Joel Basman, David Kross, Liv Lisa Fries

TV Show · Drama · Biography

Marking 100 years since Franz Kafka's death, this six-part limited series dramatizes the author's short life: his friendship with Max Brod, his fraught bond with his domineering father, his insurance office job, and his loves Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenská and Dora Diamant, weaving scenes from his life together with visions from his fiction.

2024 · 42m

Starring Joel Basman, David Kross, Liv Lisa Fries

Director David Schalko

EPISODE 1

MAX

Max Brod is convinced his shy friend Franz Kafka is a genius and does everything he can to make him famous, even against Kafka's will. Their friendship, played out in cafés, theaters and brothels across Prague, sets up the betrayal of trust that would one day give the world Kafka's work.
EPISODE 2

FELICE

Franz becomes engaged to Felice Bauer, a cousin of Max Brod, even though he hardly knows her. Over five years he calls off the wedding again and again, until Felice finally gives him an ultimatum.
EPISODE 3

FAMILIE

Franz's fractious relationship with his domineering father Hermann takes center stage, alongside Kafka's interest in Zionism and his friendship with Jizchak Löwy, an actor in a Yiddish theater troupe. The clash between his father and his friend drives Kafka to write The Metamorphosis.
EPISODE 4

Bureau

By day Kafka is a successful insurance lawyer, esteemed by his colleagues for cracking the hardest cases, yet ungrateful for the job that keeps him from writing. The office's quiet kindnesses contrast with the oppressive bureaucracies he feared and depicted in his fiction.
EPISODE 5

MILENA

Franz begins a brief but intense relationship with the Czech writer and translator Milena Jesenská, who recognizes his genius as only Max Brod has. Another passionate attachment seems possible, if Franz can stop standing in his own way.
EPISODE 6

DORA

Ravaged by tuberculosis but creatively on fire, Franz vacations in a spa town he imagines as the village of The Castle, where he meets Dora Diamant, the last love of his life, who stays with him to the end.