Guillermo del Toro isn’t the only celebrated international filmmaker who managed to realize a decades-long passion project this year. Where Del Toro had “Frankenstein,” Agnieszka Holland has “Franz,” in which the Polish director pays homage to the literary hero she discovered as a teen, resulting in an unconventional biopic that’s more puzzle than portrait.

“Kafka has been a part of my life since I was 14, which was the first time I read his short stories, and then ‘The Trial,’” remembers the “Europa Europa” helmer, who describes the popular Czech writer as a man of many paradoxes. “He was very open, but at the same time inaccessible. I had the impression that I understood him, that he was like a part of my family somehow. I even had the fantasy that I was taking care of him.”

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