“The Young Karl Marx is a long-gestating project for director Raoul Peck, whose commitment to both social justice and serious cinema is evident in everything from 2000's Lumumba to last year's brilliant, Oscar-nominated and BAFTA winning James Baldwin documentary, I Am Not Your Negro.
“Working from the considerable correspondence the key participants left, Peck and his veteran collaborator Pascal Bonitzer want to show Marx and his close collaborator Friedrich Engels as flesh and blood as well as politically committed.
“Played by top German actors August Diehl and Stefan Konarske, Marx and Engels deal with relationships and wives and all manner of emotional entanglements that share time in their lives with theoretical thinking and determined action.
“Both Marx and Engels not only believed in scientific analysis based on facts but also were committed to direct action as opposed to the kindness and fraternity of some of their peers, all of which leads to the writing of the Communist Manifesto that is the film's culmination.” The Los Angeles Times