The complete programme of the retrospective in honor of Kafka. More famous names, including Lynch and Capaldi

The festival’s previously announced section dedicated to cinematic reflections of the work of Franz Kafka has now been finalized. The retrospective section honoring the famous Prague native, The Wish to Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema, will show thirteen feature films, four medium-length films, and five shorts.

The originally announced selection has been expanded to include an exclusive programme dedicated to David Lynch’s lifelong love for the work of Franz Kafka. One block of films will include the surrealistic short film The Grandmother, which Lynch made in 1970 with financial support from the American Film Institute, as well as the third episode of the third season of the cult series Twin Peaks, which most intensely reflects the admiration of one peculiar genius for another.

One of the best-known works in the rich filmography of the legendary radical duo of film intellectuals Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet is Class Relations (1984), an adaptation of Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika.

A decade later, in his first time in the director’s chair, British actor Peter Capaldi shot Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life. This playful and original short film depicting Kafka struggling with writer’s block won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

The half-hour K is also a debut film, shot by the multifaceted Italian artist Lorenza Mazzetti while she was living in the UK. Made in 1954, the film – considered a forerunner to the UK’s famous Free Cinema movement – is the oldest title in the festival’s Kafka programme.

The complete list of films in the retrospective:

The Grandmother (dir. David Lynch, USA 1970, 34 min.)

Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (dir. David Lynch, USA 2017, 60 min.)

Class Relations (Klassenverhältnisse, dir. Jean-Marie Straub+Danièle Huillet, Germany/France 1984, 127 min.)

France Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life (dir. Peter Capaldi, United Kingdom 1993, 23 min.)

K (dir. Lorenza Mazzetti, United Kingdom 1954, 29 min.)

Kafka (dir. Steven Soderbergh, USA/France 1991, 98 min.) 

Mr. Kneff (dir. Steven Soderbergh, USA 2021, 78 min.)

The Trial (dir. Orson Welles, France/Italy/West Germany 1962, 116 min.)

Joseph Kilian (Postava k podpírání, dir. Pavel Juráček, Czechoslovakia 1963, 38 min.)

The Money Order (Mandabi, dir. Ousmane Sembene, Senegal/France 1968, 105 min.)

The Castle (Das Schloß, dir. Rudolf Noelte, West Germany 1968, 88 min.)

The Audience (L’Udienza, dir. Marco Ferreri, Italy/France 1971, 112 min.)

Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung, dir. Jan Němec, West Germany 1975, 55 min.)

The Tenant (Le Locataire, dir. Roman Polanski, France 1976, 126 min.)

After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese, USA 1985, 97 min.)

Fellini’s Intervista (Intervista, dir. Federico Fellini, Italy 1987, 105 min.)

Tetsuo (dir. Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Japan 1989, 67 min.)

Artist of Fasting (Danjiki Geinin, dir. Masao Adachi, Japan/South Korea 2015, 105 min.)

Kafka (dir. Zbigniew Rybczyński, France 1992, 52 min.)

Amerika (dir. Vladimir Michálek, Czech Republic 1994, 90 min.)

Franz Kafka’s a Country Doctor (Kafka Inaka Isha, dir. Koji Yamamura, Japan 2007, 21 min.)

The Tomb of Kafka (Le Tombeau de Kafka, dir. Jean-Claude Rousseau, France 2022, 14 min.)