The Young Karl Marx

In the mid-1800s, after decades of the scientific and economic march of the Industrial Revolution has created an age of both new prosperity and new problems, a 26-year-old writer, researcher and radical named Karl Marx embarks, with his wife Jenny, on the road to exile. In Paris in 1844 they meet young Friedrich Engels, the well-to-do son of a factory owner whose studies and research has exposed the poor wages and worse conditions of the new English working class who operate looms, printing presses and other engines of industry that enrich their owners while punishing laborers. The smooth and sophisticated – but equally revolutionary and radical – Engels brings his research, help and resources to provide Marx with the missing piece to the puzzle that composes his new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and police raids, riots and political upheavals, they will preside over the birth of the labor movement turning far-flung and unorganized idealists and dreamers into a united force with a common goal. The organizations they create and ideas they put forward will grow into the most complete philosophical and political transformation of the world since the Renaissance – started, against all expectations, by two brilliant, insolent and sharp-witted young men whose writings, works and ideas were embraced by revolutionaries even as they were corrupted by dictators. As director Raoul Peck himself puts it, “Before they’d even reached the age of thirty, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had undoubtedly started to change the world – for better or worse ...”

Director Biography

Raoul Peck is a director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Haiti, he was raised in the Congo, in the US and in France. He then studied Economic Engineering at the TU Berlin and the DFFB Berlin. Peck served as Haiti’s Minister of Culture in 1996 and 1997, and since 2010 he has been the president of the famous film and television school La Fe´mis in Paris. In 2001, Human Rights Watch awarded him the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award. He served as a jury member at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, as well as serving as a jury member at the Berlinale in 2002.

NEW RELEASES

Extraordinary foreign films, must-see American indies, and groundbreaking documentaries from around the world, screening weekly at the Film Society.

Browse New Releases