Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. German filmmaker JULIA VON HEINZ directs STEPHEN FRY in the film TREASURE. In this interview, Julia and Stephen talk about working in the movie and about the challenges during the filming. A father-daughter road trip set in 1990s Poland, TREASURE follows Ruth (Lena Dunham), an American music journalist, and her father, Edek (Stephen Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a journey to his homeland. While Ruth is eager to make sense of her family’s past, Edek embarks on the trip with his own agenda. This emotional, funny culture clash of two New Yorkers exploring post-socialist Poland is a powerful example of how reconnecting with family and the past can be an unexpected treasure. TREASURE is in theaters nationwide on June 14th.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Julia, what was the biggest challenge for you making this film?
00:05To bring it all together, actually.
00:08I'm a German director, the film's taking place in Poland,
00:12and of course we needed an actor with an English-speaking background,
00:16also for financing.
00:18It's not so easy to finance a film like that.
00:21So I guess to bring together all these different components
00:25and make it one, that was quite a challenge for me.
00:30Stephen, what do you like the most about playing Edek?
00:35How do you relate to your character?
00:38Well, he leaped off the page when I read the script
00:42and then Lily Brett's novel.
00:44And meeting Julia for the first read with Lina,
00:49I was so encouraged by their attitude and their confidence,
00:53and we all seemed to understand the character of Edek
00:56together in the same way.
00:58I had the advantage of a grandfather who was quite similar
01:01in his zest for life and his very continental, I suppose you'd call it,
01:07a very Central European manner.
01:10And so I felt inside my grandfather,
01:16and I was enormously helped by the fact that Lily was so encouraging.
01:22Sometimes authors who have their books turned into films,
01:26you imagine that the only way it would be successful
01:29would be if you put the book on a music stand
01:31and pointed a camera at it and turned the page every minute.
01:35That's the only way they'd be satisfied.
01:37But Lily understood that a film is a different entity
01:41and you represent the spirit of the book.
01:43And, yeah, it was just such a wonderful set to be on.
01:47The whole crew were so encouraging.
01:50It was a 600-pages book, actually,
01:52and Lily was really helpful with the decision,
01:56which side plots to lose, all the characters,
01:58to really focus on the love story between a father and her daughter,
02:03which is the very core of the book and the film, I would say.
02:07In Germany, we learn a lot about the Holocaust, luckily so.
02:12I mean, this is what we learn at school every year,
02:17but it's never connected to humour, never.
02:21It's the facts, it's the numbers, it's the pictures, it's the film,
02:24and it's our education.
02:26So when I first read Lily Brett's books,
02:29that was a whole new thing for me,
02:31that this is even allowed to be connected with humour.
02:35So this was the most important for me and John Kwesta, my co-writer,
02:39to bring that to the script.
02:42And then I needed the wonderful actors who were able to do comedy
02:46and have the emotional connection to the story.
02:50And Stephen and Lena brought both.
02:53So that helped me to meet that humour of Lily Brett's book.
02:57In a sense, I think, the gift that Edek has
03:01is you don't identify as a Holocaust survivor the whole of your life.
03:06You look forward and you embrace the freedom
03:09and the life in New York City and the family,
03:12and that's your victory over the Nazis,
03:15is that you're not defined by this experience.
03:18And so the comedy comes from the fact that the daughter, of course,
03:21doesn't really understand that, and why should she?
03:24For her, it's an adventure.
03:26Look at where my father was. I want to discover it.
03:29And it seems so natural for her.
03:31And they each have to understand each other,
03:33which is the symmetry of the film, I think.
03:36Stephen, what have you learned from your character?
03:39Oh, an enormous amount.
03:41It makes you think so hard
03:43about what it really is like to have survived
03:47and you become a different person inside the camp to survive.
03:53And then when you leave, as I say, you just want to look forward.
03:56And I hadn't really thought about the life of a survivor.
04:00They just seem to be put into a box.
04:02Survivor. How lucky, how wonderful.
04:05They can spread the message of what evil can do.
04:08But actually, film is so brilliant at examining private lives
04:13and how the feelings are involved.
04:16And I think that's a very rare thing.
04:18There have been films set around and after and before the Holocaust before,
04:23but not one, I think, that is so family-orientated.
04:26It's about, as Julia said, a father and daughter,
04:29the subject that Shakespeare most loved.