2024 is the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death – for this anniversary, German and Austrian television are planning a six-part mini-series about the life of Kafka, who is considered the world’s most widely read German-language writer and one of the most famous writers of the 20th century.
The screenplay comes from the bestselling author Daniel Kehlmann (“Measuring the World”) and the director David Schalko (“Braunschlag”), as announced on Wednesday by the NDR and the first.
All ARD stations (NDR, WDR, SWR, BR, MDR, RBB, HR, SR and Radio Bremen) are involved in the “Kafka” project in co-production with the ORF and together with the company Superfilm.
The screenplays are based on the three-volume Kafka biography by Reiner Stach, who also works here as a consultant. “I am proud and grateful that I was able to write the screenplays based on Reiner Stach’s standard work for the great director and storyteller David Schalko,” Kehlmann was quoted as saying. “Franz Kafka’s nightmares are our daily reality: in his dark and yet comical visions he sensed the world in which we all now live. These visions did not come out of nowhere, but formed out of his life, his family, his private environment .”
Joel Basman (Franz Kafka), Daniel Brühl (Max Brod), Nicholas Ofczarek (Hermann Kafka) and Liv Lisa Fries (Milena Jesenská) have been notified of the cast. Filming is planned for spring 2023, the expected broadcast date in the ARD media library, in the first and in ORF should be in spring 2024. Kafka died on June 3, 1924 at the age of 40.
