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Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “Treasure,” a feature film pairing the odd couple acting of Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry, as a daughter and father trying to bond in the backdrop of his memories of Auschwitz. Currently in theaters since June 14th.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

The film is set in 1991, and Dunham is Ruth, the daughter of Edek (Fry), a Polish immigrant that has not been back to the Auschwitz death camp since he was confined there as a teenager. Ruth has meticulously planned the trip, which includes a side journey to the former family factory and house in the Polish town of Lodz. Edek acts strange and elusive throughout the midst of the trip, leading to a further tear in the fabric of their relationship. What they will learn is about to become very important.

“Treasure” is in theaters since June 14th. Featuring Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry,...

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.

The roles have been reversed for Julia Brystygier (Maria Mamona), the once powerful colonel in the Ussr’s Ministry. She interrogated countless enemies of the state, namely Catholics who rejected the communist concepts ruling them. The human body was her canvas, torture her paintbrush — nothing was out of bounds as far as acquiring the information she sought. But that was years ago. Now she’s a private citizen like the masses trying to survive. A lucky one too considering many of her superiors during that period are now in jail or dead for the crimes they committed. Julia’s prison is therefore self-imposed. Where confidence and control used to reside is now only fear, guilt, and regret. Her solitary hope for salvation becomes forgiveness from a God she doesn’t believe exists.

Ryszard Bugajski‘s Zacma: Blindness opens on an empty apartment, phone incessantly ringing to cut through the silence.