Class Relations

Film pioneers Straub and Huillet, who have often made films based on unfinished works by authors, turn to Franz Kafka's first, unfinished novel, America, in Class Relations. Straub once said: "From our point of view, Kafka is the only significant poet of industrial civilisation. A civilisation in which people depend on work for their survival." Kafka never visited America, so it is no coincidence that the story of Karl Rosmann, a European who emigrates to a hypocritical and dishonest country, was filmed in Hamburg. In Class Relations, Straub and Huillet construct a hard-hitting commentary on injustice and exploitation.