14/02/2023 - The pair will collaborate on the comedy, set largely in mid-1990s Poland, which follows a US music journalist and her Holocaust survivor father’s return to his native country

Director Julia von Heinz (© La Biennale di Venezia/Foto ASAC/Jacopo Salvi) and actress-director Lena Dunham (© GabboT)

Julia von Heinz is setting up her first primarily English-language film with Treasure [+see also:
film review
film profile] (provisional title Iron Box), creating a notable meeting of European and Anglophone cinema through the casting of Lena Dunham (the one-time HBO phenomenon Girls and, more recently, Catherine Called Birdy [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Stephen Fry, a stalwart of British comedy and broadcasting, in the leads. Shooting begins on location this month for what’s described as a “multi-generational comedy”, where Fry and Dunham will play a father and daughter who return to the former’s home of Poland, from where he escaped the Holocaust. von Heinz herself had her greatest platform to date when And Tomorrow the Entire World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Julia von Heinz
film profile] was in 2020’s Venice competition, as well as being selected as Germany’s entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

A co-production between Germany, the USA, Poland and France, the film will be produced by von Heinz and Fabian Gasmia for Seven Elephants and Dunham herself for Good Thing Going. Further producers are Kings & Queen, Lava Films and Haïku Films. Additional financing comes from national media institutions such as Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the CNC. FilmNation is in charge of the international rights, with the exception of France, Germany, Austria and Poland, and will be touting the project at the imminent EFM.

Adapted from Australian writer Lily Brett’s novel Too Many Men and set in the mid-1990s, the plot finds the two main characters, Ruth (Dunham) and Edek (Fry), with opposing motivations as they decamp to Poland. The former wants to explore her family history in more depth, whilst Edek has his own particular agenda, one “filled with distraction and entertainment”. This is all set against the backdrop of a country itself in transition, shaking off its socialist past. The story also evokes the director’s prior film Hanna’s Journey [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which saw a young German woman travelling to Israel, where she discovers much about her grandparents’ experience in World War II.

von Heinz said that she “wrote to [Brett] as a fan and admirer. Her books are brilliant, deeply funny and at the same time aware of the ultimate sadness of life. This film being made today, with this cast and these partners, is more than I ever dared to dream of.”

Fry added, “It chimed with so much in my own family history, but in its brilliant depiction of a tricky, funny and spiky father-daughter relationship, it will chime with just about everyone, whatever their story.”