The Young Karl Marx

The Young Karl Marx (Le Jeune Karl Marx, 2017) is a Belgian-German-French historical drama directed by Raoul Peck — watch it online on iFILM. The film catches Marx at twenty-six: expelled from Germany, flat broke in Paris, his wife Jenny beside him and a pile of manuscripts no one will publish. August Diehl plays him as a man whose ideas are already running faster than his circumstances will allow.

The turning point arrives with Friedrich Engels, played by Stefan Konarske — a factory owner's son who spent time in Manchester's mills and came back with evidence that confirmed everything Marx was theorising. Vicky Krieps is Jenny von Westphalen, the sharpest person in most rooms. Together the three navigate police surveillance, internal fights inside the labour movement, and the sheer bureaucratic grind of exile. The film ends just as the Manifesto takes shape — the document that would define the next century and a half of politics.

Peck directed I Am Not Your Negro and brings the same discipline here: no monuments, no hagiography, just the texture of two ambitious young men figuring out what they believe. Stream The Young Karl Marx (2017) online on iFILM.