Klassenverhältnisse

The radical film KLASSENVERHÄLTNISSE loosely takes up the story of Karl Roßmann from Kafka's novel fragment The Missing Man: Karl is sent to the USA as a young man by his parents after he is "seduced" by a maid and the maid has a child with him. Karl finds himself in a strange world. He fails in this world full of lies, false optimism and brutal encounters, which confronts him with unwritten social laws and reveals the true "class relations".

In the film adaptation by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, The Missing Man, published in early Kafka editions under the title "America", becomes "an allegory about a capitalist society set in no specific time and in a fictional America".