ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Treasure stars Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry about the emotional comedy-drama. Bleecker Street’s film focuses on a father and daughter traveling to Poland for the very first time considering that the father survived the Holocaust. The Julia von Heinz-directed film is now playing nationwide.

“A father-daughter road trip set in 1990s Poland, Treasure follows Ruth (Dunham), an American music journalist, and her father, Edek (Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a journey to his homeland,” says the synopsis for Julia von Heinz’s film. “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.”

Tyler Treese: Stephen, in the starting, your character is really considerably attempting not to grapple with the trauma of his previous and the effects of the Holocaust. It’s a really organic reaction and I really feel it is a really male issue to do as nicely, to really considerably push that away. What did you just discover most intriguing about seriously exploring that wall that men and women place up as a defense mechanism?

Stephen Fry: You’ve totally place your finger on it, I feel. I had the practical experience of my personal grandfather and other members of my mother’s side of the family members who had been European Jewish and who’d of course, by definition, survived. The armor, or the wall as you place it, is a mixture of humor. Just flipping issues away with a joke or just just ignoring it.

It is understandable, as you also mentioned, due to the fact you picture going by means of that practical experience and then you arrive in America and, you actually, are in the land of freedom, there’s Lady Liberty when you arrive and all the cliches of Ellis Island, but you bring up a, a daughter and there we are in a cost-free nation, all that behind us. It’s really understandable. You do not want to engage with it.

It’s equally understandable that some men and women could under no circumstances escape it, that they’d be pondering about it and be sort of closed down. But my grandfather and Edek had had that comparable issue of just getting out there and embarrassing us as grandchildren by speaking to strangers in the street and becoming immediate very best mates and all these issues that Edek does. I just feel it is, and I saw this with the script the character leaped off with such authenticity and truthfulness and his connection with his daughter, which is such a profound and significant issue. It just appears so accurate.

Lena, this film bargains with a lot of heavy subjects, but there’s also a lot of seriously funny comedy right here, and they seriously complement the stunning dramatic scenes that you share with Stephen. I was seriously impressed by the sensitivity you show in these scenes. As a inventive your self, what did you like most about this balance of comedy and drama and acquiring this humor out of such trauma?

Lena Dunham: Well, I feel what was, so, I imply, apart from the irresistible reality of functioning with men and women as talented as Julia and Stephen, each of whom are heroes to me in distinct and crucial methods, I was so excited to study a script that was prepared to engage in the humor that is a survival mechanism for everyone who bargains with trauma. The art of humor has been such an crucial component of Jewish survival, and we discover [it’s] such an crucial component of the survival of everyone who has… We talked about this a lot in the method, is there’s discomfort, and then there usually have to be jokes. Also, exactly where there is family members, there is comedy. It’s the crucial recipe.

Stephen place it seriously nicely, which is, “There are films that are about history with a capital H, and those need to exist.” And I can not take credit for that quote. That’s all him. “And then there are films about the people that have been affected by history and who come after history.” I feel for me, I seriously did really feel my job was to just stand there and sort of be as considerably as I could as scaffold for this extremely affecting overall performance of Stephen’s. Because for a lot of the film, my character is sort of a petulant brat in that she has not however been in a position to realize why her father is the way he is. It is not by going back to exactly where they’re from. She does get what she desires, which is a glimpse of who her father is, but in a really distinct way than she anticipated. She develops an understanding of why she was raised the way she was raised.

I seriously associated to that as a writer and as a person who grew up in a Polish Jewish immigrant family members exactly where these subjects had been not at front of thoughts. I was usually the kid who was pushing and asking and demanding. And I’m positive it was maddening for the men and women about me. I really feel like this film helped me realize deeply why my grandmother, my grandfather, who reminds me a wonderful deal of Edek, and even my mother, there had been issues that they wanted to move forward, not backward. And they saw not sharing particular issues as protection, whereas I saw truth as the antidote to all the things. So in addition to an incredible inventive practical experience, it permitted a lot of interpersonal understanding for me inside my personal family members.

The director told me that you lived fairly considerably in the similar spot in New York City as the author of the book and your households had been from the similar component of Poland. It just seemed like meant to be.

Dunham: That was just a crazy coincidence. It was wild to me that her family members came from the similar spot that mine did in Poland and that each of us ended up living in the similar 4-block radius or so in downtown New York in the 1980s, which was a spot exactly where there was a big quantity of… it was an extremely diverse neighborhood exactly where a lot of sorts of immigrants came to reside, but there was a big preponderance of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The reality that we had been in a position to share all of that, and she was so deeply moved due to the fact I feel watching Stephen created her really feel like she had her father back in a way.

Stephen, you talked about modeling your overall performance on your grandfather, and I enjoy the small touches that you each place into the father-daughter connection. I enjoy how he’s usually embarrassing her and speaking her up. It is a really cute dynamic. How was it building that back and forth with Lena?

Fry: It was created quick by the reality that I just fell in enjoy with her the moment we met. Of course, she brought with her the incredible history of her profession, which is so stellar. Girls knocked my socks off. That’s the ideal phrase? Blew them off. Oh, knocked me off my socks, anything to do with socks [laughs], and a lot to do with sex. Let’s be sincere. It was eyeopening for a gay man to want to see what was going on in this other species that I had only seriously heard about and hadn’t correctly researched.

But no, we laughed all the time, and it was so sweet due to the fact Julia, the director, when she was rather nervous when we had our table study, and the moment Lena and I had been with each other, she just looked at us and saw that we had been family members somehow straight away. Of course, in filming, specifically when it gets to these a lot more emotional moments, you require the self-assurance to attempt and fail in front of the camera to overdo it, underdo it, but not to be embarrassed, not in any way to be self-conscious, which is the absolute bane of a film actor’s life. Because the camera sees it. So the reality that I was so entirely at ease with Lena created it seriously just a joy every single day to share camera space with her and, certainly, share off-camera space.

Dunham: I just, I was saying I really feel like from the minute that we arrived in Poland at the starting. I imply, seriously, from the table. From the moment we arrived in Poland with each other in February to the moment that we wrapped at the starting of May, I felt like we began a conversation that just under no circumstances ended like it existed among requires it existed throughout requires, and that is not anything that you can necessarily produce. It’s there.

You can attempt to produce bonds with men and women, but it is a bit like a blind date exactly where you show up, and you go hoping this all performs as planned. From the minute, he was such a hero of mine that, of course, there’s that nervousness. But he created me so comfy, his sense of humor, his way of getting. He seriously did really feel associated to me and has continued to. And I feel that lengthy, cold winter would’ve been a really distinct issue had I not been laughing and smiling and feeling so secure and realizing I was building a familial connection off-camera as nicely.

Fry: So do not overlook the moment I arrived in Poland. I tested constructive for Covid. They had to film the only scenes in which you had been on your personal.

Dunham: Correct. They mentioned, “We have some good news. Stephen made it. We have some less good news. He has Covid.” And I went and I stuck a note below his door. I was on the verge of asking if he wanted to play cards below the door, but I do not wanna overdo it. But the minute that he got out there, he brought the spirit.

I usually brag about the moment that he delivered his large scene exactly where he speaks Polish all through the complete scene to the family members that has taken more than the residence that he lived in when he was younger. I have under no circumstances noticed this just before. The complete crew gave him a standing ovation, and that was like one particular of these moments exactly where you go, “I will never forget this. This is why we do what we do.”