Julia von Heinz has lined up her next project. The German filmmaker will follow up Oscar hopeful “And Tomorrow the Entire World” with “Iron Box,” a family drama set to star “Girls” alumna Lena Dunham. Variety broke the news.
“Iron Box” is set in 1990 and follows a New York businesswoman (Dunham) “who decides to take her aging father (Mandy Patinkin) back to his native Poland, where she hopes to explore her Jewish roots.” Patinkin plays a Holocaust survivor in the film.
“Julia’s film struck a deep chord in me both because of its radicalism and its core value of empathy. I knew I wanted to go wherever she was taking me, and the fact that she’s taking me further into an exploration of what it means to be Jewish and the stories we carry forward as daughters of trauma is deeply moving to me. Mandy Patinkin is, of course, the icing on the genius cake,” said Dunham.
“And Tomorrow the Entire World” premiered in Competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival. Co-written by von Heinz, the political drama sees a 20-year-old woman joining a subdivision of Antifa to oppose the neo-Nazi movement following a wave of racist terrorist attacks in Germany. The film has been submitted as Germany’s pick for the International Feature category at this year’s edition of the Academy Awards.
The source describes “Iron Box” as “part of von Heinz’s ‘Aftermath Trilogy,’ which examines the legacy of Germany’s Nazi past in three very different films.”
“We still struggle with the Holocaust and the trauma passes on to the next generation,” said von Heinz. “‘Hanna’s Journey’ was my first film about it – a third generation love story between a German girl and an Israeli. ‘And Tomorrow the Entire World’ was about the even younger ones, the fourth generation, who still feel responsible and have to act. They have to stand up if far-right voices rise up again. And ‘Iron Box’ is the third and last part of this trilogy. It’s the second generation, and they have a huge trauma.”
An eight-time Emmy nominee for her work as a writer, director, actor, and exec producer on “Girls,” Dunham’s other on-screen credits include ” Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,” “American Horror Story,” and “Sky.”
