Film pioneers Straub and Huillet, who have often made films based on unfinished works by authors, turn to Franz Kafka's first, unfinished novel, America, in Class Relations. Straub once said: "From our point of view, Kafka is the only significant poet of industrial civilisation. A civilisation in which people depend on work for their survival." Kafka never visited America, so it is no coincidence that the story of Karl Rosmann, a European who emigrates to a hypocritical and dishonest country, was filmed in Hamburg. In Class Relations, Straub and Huillet construct a hard-hitting commentary on injustice and exploitation.
