Kafkas

A short film directed by Nick Blake.

Based on the short story by Marianne Wiggins, and written for the screen by Robin Blake & Nick Blake, the film stars Patsy Ferran and Stefanie Martini and features music composed by Erik Friedlander.

Oh no, no, no, Mr Kafka. I have a schöner plan. I want to marry a man with the surname Kafka…

Fran Koslow, 25 with a PhD and little else, has wound up sleeping on a camp bed in her married sister Dina’s mud-room. She is supposedly looking for a job.

But Fran is terrified of the big wide world and, in 1980s Massachussetts, there are no jobs for a college educated bag of nerves, with her head full of philosophy and an obsession with Franz Kafka. So she looks further afield, cold-calling men with the surname Kafka all over America in the small hours of the night, hoping to find a soul mate and a husband.

But they don’t see, and Kafka after Kafka hangs up on her. Then she comes across Barry Kafka, who imagines this is a chance to have phone sex. But now Dina and her husband Sherman, who drives a truck and is built like a tank, have received the phone bill. It totals $700 and they want their money back, or Fran out.

Kafkas is a tragic-comic tale of paranoid agoraphobia, combining Kafkaesque noir with a slight twist of A Streetcar Named Desire.

In 2022 Kafkas was selected for Slamdance and other film festivals around the world, It has won Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay, among other awards. It was released in 2023 on the short films site Film Shortage.

You can see the trailer and find out more about the film here:

https://www.kafkasfilm.com/#Trailer

The whole film can be viewed free of charge here:

https://filmshortage.com/dailyshortpicks/kafkas/