The Glory of Life

November 18, 2024 at 6:00 PM
Roxie Theater, San Francisco

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Because of love, the last year of Franz Kafka’s life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis, and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he meets Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of the world, the 14-years-younger woman is from the deep East. He writes, she dances. She has both feet firmly on the ground. He is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz’s health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka’s health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life. Based on the best-selling novel by Michael Kumpfmüller.

2024 commemorates 100 years since the passing of the literary great, Franz Kafka.