Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. LENA DUNHAM stars in the film TREASURE, directed by German filmmaker JULIA VON HEINZ. In this interview, Lena talks about working in the movie and about her character. 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
00:00What attracted you to this project?
00:04Well, I think that, you know, Julia von Heinz
00:06is such a brilliant filmmaker.
00:08I loved her movie, And Tomorrow, The Entire World.
00:11I found it so powerful and the concerns
00:14that she was exploring so powerful.
00:16And when I read the script, I was just
00:18amazed that I was being offered such a rich, complicated role
00:23that was going to take me to new places.
00:25I think the thing that I love most about filmmaking
00:28is I'm not necessarily the most adventurous person
00:31in my day-to-day life.
00:32I tend to kind of want to stay, like the living room
00:35is about as far as I like to go.
00:37But when I go on set and when I go to, like,
00:41making films has taken me around the world,
00:43introduced me to people who have changed my life,
00:47become family, you know, I can count close friends
00:51everywhere from, you know, Japan to Poland now
00:55because of my experience making films.
00:58And so I wanted to work with Julia.
01:00I wanted to work with Stephen.
01:01I wanted to explore my own heritage
01:03as an Eastern European Jew.
01:05And I wanted to learn about this new way of filmmaking.
01:09And also, I studied Polish filmmakers in college
01:14when I got my film history degree.
01:16You know, I studied the work of Kieślowski really closely.
01:19And, you know, we had an actor, you know,
01:23Zbigniew Zamykowski, who starred in Kieślowski films,
01:28who is brilliant.
01:29And so it also felt like my film history education
01:33coming to life.
01:35And what do you like the most about playing Ruth?
01:39How do you relate to your character
01:41and how would you describe her?
01:45I relate to her deeply because I think that she is a person
01:48who is trying to take her trauma
01:54and turn it into humor, turn it into an armor.
01:58She's a writer.
01:59She's more comfortable examining other people
02:01than she is examining herself.
02:05She is self-conscious about her body,
02:09yet thinks and wants to deserve love.
02:12Like there are so many aspects of who she is
02:14that feel true to me and feel true to so many of the women
02:18that I know and love.
02:19And so it was really easy for me to access her.
02:24And also, of course, I spent a lot of time
02:26talking to Lily Brett, the brilliant author
02:29of Too Many Men, the book that the film is based on.
02:32And Lily was kind enough to share
02:35so much about her own history,
02:38growing up as a second-generation Holocaust survivor,
02:42being a writer in New York in, you know, the 80s and 90s,
02:47and actually, unknowingly, I grew up three blocks
02:50from where Lily lived in New York.
02:52So we were probably passing each other
02:53in the streets of New York when I was a kid
02:55and not even knowing it.
02:56So there was a lot of magical coincidences like that
02:59that conspired to make Ruth really feel like,
03:02I feel like if someone else had gotten to play her,
03:04I would have been really jealous.
03:07I was working with Stephen.
03:10Stephen Fry is everything you want him to be and more.
03:13I have never worked with someone
03:15who more people say is he as wonderful as he seems.
03:18Like I have worked with some pretty amazing actors
03:21in my day.
03:22I have worked with some pretty incredible luminaries
03:27and people ask me about Stephen Fry
03:31because whether it's that they grew up watching him
03:36on, you know, a quiz show like QI
03:38or his film, his portrayal of Oscar Wilde
03:43awakened them to their queer identity
03:45or they fell asleep listening to him
03:47narrate the Harry Potter books.
03:49He means something different to everyone.
03:51But what I tell everyone is he is exactly as wise,
03:55kind, and intelligent as you would hope that he would be.
03:59He is a remarkable man.