When Donald Trump was first sworn in as US president in 2017, George Orwell's "1984" rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists. Dystopias such as Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and Sinclair Lewis' "It Doesn't Happen Here" also saw a revival.
Franz Kafka's "The Trial" also increased in popularity, according to Agnieszka Holland.
It shows that we are looking for some kind of explanation for what is happening and what makes us afraid, she says.
Holland is one of Poland's most successful film and television directors, with numerous international awards and an Oscar nomination to her credit.
Last year she made the controversial refugee crisis film "Green Border" in her home country. Now she is in cinemas with "Franz K" - an unconventional biopic about Franz Kafka.
“Getting to know” Kafka
She began reading the Austro-Czech writer as a teenager, and the fact that Kafka came from Prague was a big reason Holland chose to study there. For her, he was a constant presence, both professionally and privately.
I read everything that was available in Poland, not least his letters, and I felt that I got to know him and that I understood him.
For many years, Kafka was virtually unknown in what was then Czechoslovakia, not least because the communist regime portrayed him as a “degenerate bourgeois writer.” When the country became free, it became clear that Kafka's name was profitable, and there is now a large tourist industry around him.
Some of this is depicted in “Franz K,” which mixes fiction and documentary footage. Holland also breaks the fourth wall and has people look into or speak directly into the camera.
Holland herself wanted to avoid making a "conventional and boring" biopic that pretends to know the truth about the main character.
"I don't think it's possible to know the truth about someone, including myself. But we can pretend. So I like it when you don't pretend to give an objective picture of someone's life, but just get into it," she says.
Relevant
Holland notes that Kafka's literature about totalitarian society is becoming increasingly relevant:
He saw how the law was arbitrary and authoritarian - how it had nothing to do with justice and how the institutions treat people as guilty from the start. We begin to feel that reality is against us.
Facts: Agnieszka Holland
Age: 77 years.
Lives: In New York.
Family: One daughter.
Profession: Director, screenwriter.
Previous films and TV series in selection: "To Kill a Priest", "The Secret Garden", "The Wire", "Rosemary's Baby" (miniseries), "Wild Hunt", "Mr Jones", "Green Border".
Current: "Franz K", which has a Swedish cinema premiere on 27/3.
