Key Highlights
- Kafka, who died in 1924 aged just 40, saw the way the wind in Europe was blowing, and, when the dust settled after World War II, it was assumed his uncanny foresight had seen — at best — just a few years into the future by predicting the manipulative rise of the Nazis.
- Related Stories News 'Hedda' Writer-Director Nia DaCosta's Unique Spin On Ibsen's Play: "I Thought, 'What If I Just Notched It Up To 11?" News Leo Woodall On Learning German Alongside Russell Crowe For 'Nuremberg': "I Put A Lot Of Pressure On Myself" If only that had been the case.
- Nowadays, the adjective “Kafkaesque” is more loaded than ever; like the word “Orwellian” it serves to encapsulate the insanity of the post-truth world we now live in and are expected to take for granted, where politicians tell us that up is down, right is left, and war is peace.
- As she explains here, Holland discovered Kafka in her early teens, and it explains a lot about her subsequent career, making films about people who get lost in, or who are marginalized by, the machinations of unchecked authority.
- Now 77, she is reaching the top of the Best International Feature totem pole, with three Oscar nominations to date — for Angry Harvest (1985), Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011) — but the pointed snub from Poland’s selection committee, not to mention the wrath of its government, for her angry 2023 immigrant drama Green Border proves that she will not be bowing out quietly.
