Risk Everything

GENRE:

Thriller, Fantasy, Romance

PITCH:
What if Franz Kafka didn’t die, but poured his life into a doll?

LOGLINE:

A failed writer is possessed by Franz Kafka; it is up to his wife to free him. But does she really want to?

Inspired by the true story of the letters Kafka wrote from a doll to a little girl. Based on the poem The Wanderer King by Theodore Deppe.

SYNOPSIS 

Berlin. 1988. The wall is still up.

Tom, An American writer, a one-shot wonder who can’t match his previous success, lives in Berlin while his wife Rachel finishes her thesis on Kafka.

For their tenth wedding anniversary he buys her a doll from 1924. She buys him a divining rod, to help him re-find his muse.

Although they don’t realize it, Kafka’s soul is imprisoned in the doll. Tom writes about the fall of the Wall in Kafka’s voice, and again becomes successful.  But Rachel knows that Tom has changed, and the change has something to do with the doll.

When Tom develops an illness that baffles his doctors, Rachel tries to take the doll away, but Tom gets as violent as an addict on withdrawal. He is now writing some magnum opus obsessively and needs the doll in the room with him to work.

Rachel investigates the doll, neglecting her own work. After tracing a series of owners she discovers that the doll originally belonged to a little Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust and now lives in Israel.

Tom has a psychotic episode and Rachel has to institutionalize him. She convinces the grant people to give her an extension because she's had a breakthrough but needs to go to Tel Aviv.

She takes the doll to Israel and finds the girl. The girl, now in her 70s, recognizes the doll and tells about Kafka and the letters Kafka wrote from the doll to her. She still has the letters and discover a horrific connection between doll and letters. As Kafka wrote, his dying soul flowed through the letters from his body into the doll.

Back in Berlin, Tom takes a turn for the worse. Rachel reads him the letters, which makes Kafka manifest.  Kafka has taken over Tom completely. The doctor’s think Tom’s madness (though not his TB) is cured and Rachel takes him home.

Rachel struggles to defeat Kafka and win back her husband’s soul. It's a difficult choice: she could choose to stay with Kafka, be his Dora Diamant. She's tempted, very tempted, but something that remains - the divining rod pointing to water - pulls her back from the edge.

Rachel convinces Kafka to cross over and find his real Dora Diamant. Finally she gets Tom back, and together they celebrate the fall of the Wall.

BIOS