Jackals and Arabs(2011)

Jackals and Arabs is a experimental film that stages a reading of a Kafka dialogue within filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub's Paris apartment. Rather than a conventional narrative, the work presents actors performing text drawn from Kafka's writings, transforming the intimate domestic space into a site of literary interpretation. Straub's approach strips away theatrical artifice, grounding the philosophical exchange in the austere reality of his own home. The film treats language and performance as primary concerns, inviting viewers into a meditative encounter with Kafka's ideas. This is cinema as philosophical exercise—a spare, intellectually demanding work that privileges the spoken word and the actor's presence over plot or spectacle.