The Young Karl Marx

Set in the mid-1840s, this historical drama follows Karl Marx, then twenty-six, as he leaves Germany with his wife Jenny and settles into an impoverished exile in Paris. There he crosses paths with Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy industrialist who has been studying the grim conditions of the British working class. Though they come from very different backgrounds, the two men form a friendship and a working partnership that draws them into the political ferment sweeping across Europe, where they contend with censorship, police repression and the upheavals of the period while helping to shape the labor movement.

Raoul Peck directed and co-wrote the film with Pascal Bonitzer, working from a production based in Germany, Belgium and France. The film sits between Peck's 1998 feature It's Not About Love and two later works, I Am Not Your Negro, also released in 2017, and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. August Diehl plays Marx, Stefan Konarske plays Engels, and Vicky Krieps plays Jenny von Westphalen, with Olivier Gourmet, Hannah Steele and Rolf Kanies among the supporting cast.

Made for around ten million dollars, the film took in roughly half that amount worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 6.6 rating from about 7,800 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.8 from a much smaller pool of 332 votes, indicating a modest but slightly warmer response from that audience.