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Stephen Fry is a remarkable presence in the new film from Julia von Heinz, Treasure. Sloppy in an oddly charming way, he feels like the cinematic shadow of so many Cold War-era exiles whose choppy English obfuscates their intelligence. He plays Edek, a man who joins his daughter, Ruth (the equally erudite Lena Dunham), on an exploration of Poland in the early '90s after the fall of the Soviet Union. The huggable pair bicker like it's a love language as they visit Edek's hometown, bringing back harsh memories of the Holocaust.

One of the most interesting aspects of the new dramedy is the way it explores each generation's reaction and relationship to the past and its traumas. Edek has experienced the horror, and doesn't want to revisit it or expose his daughter to it, while she thinks it's healing to confront the past. That generational difference was familiar to Fry,...

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Lena Dunham has often explored the ennui of younger generations, satirically juxtaposed with their elders. This often exists at the intersection of class or gender difference, as well; it's something we've seen to great effect in her early classic, Tiny Furniture, and her hit show, Girls. She now finds herself exemplifying that theme in the new film Treasure, where she plays a music journalist traveling post-Soviet Poland after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her father (an immaculate Stephen Fry) tags along on this tour of their ancestral home, from where they've been exiled ever since the Nazis' invasion and subsequent Communist takeover. They each have very different reactions.

"It's really interesting to me," said Dunham of the generational difference on display in Treasure. The father has first-hand knowledge of the horrors that took place in Poland during World War II; the...

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Before Treasure, pairing Tiny Furniture and Girls auteur Lena Dunham with legendary British comedian and intellectual Stephen Fry might have seemed odd or random at best. But seeing them as father and daughter in the new film, you realize how important casting really is. They're a brilliant pairing, erudite but huggable, cantankerous in different ways appropriate to their respective generations. In Treasure, the two visit Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union, allowing them to explore their Jewish roots in a country that was torn asunder by the Nazis in World War II.

We spoke with Dunham about the luminous happenstance of this specific pairing. "From the minute we met," said Dunham regarding her bond with Fry. "So we agreed that we were going to work together. We had a table read, and we both showed up wearing yellow and burgundy striped shirts,...

Stephen Fry, normally the embodiment of droll detachment, cuts a much earthier figure in Treasure, the new film from German writer-director Julia von Heinz. With a thick beard and scraggly gray hair, a credible Slavic accent, and a distinctly oafish slump in his large frame, Fry transforms himself into Edek Rothwax, a haunted Holocaust survivor and recent widower who, in accompanying his daughter Ruth (Lena Dunham) to his homeland of Poland in 1991, would rather flirt with translators and sing karaoke than revisit the locales of his past.

Heinz shoots Poland through a gauzy gray filter that’s almost as extreme as the hackneyed orange tint used to portray Mexico in so many thrillers that center around drug trafficking. The dreary look is certainly appropriate, though, to the depressing landscapes of ramshackle buildings, not to mention the immediately post-communist time period and lingering trauma of the Holocaust half a century earlier.

"What Jew goes to Poland as a tourist?" Bleecker Street has unveiled their official trailer for a film titled Treasure, based on a true story and adapted from the novel of the same written by Lily Brett. This initially premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival a few months ago (here's our review), and will also play at the Tribeca Film Festival soon. It's now set for a theatrical US release in June coming soon this summer. Set in the 1990s, an American journalist named Ruth travels to Poland with her father Edek to visit his childhood places and the home where he grew up. But Edek, who's a Holocaust survivor, resists reliving his trauma & sabotages the trip creating unintentionally funny situations & taking her to strange places, befriending a taxi driver. Starring Lena Dunham as Ruth & Stephen Fry as Edek, along with Zbigniew Zamachowski, Tomasz Wlosok, Wenanty Nosul, Iwona Bielska, and Maria Mamona.