The movie, which is set just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is an adaptation of a bestselling novel by Lily Brett called Too Many Men. It is being adapted and will be directed by German filmmaker Julia von Heinz and it is the third in a trilogy of films by von Heinz about the Nazi past and its aftermath.
The first film in this trilogy, Hanna’s Journey, is about a young German woman who comes to Israel to work with people with disabilities and discovers some secrets about what her grandparents did in World War II, and falls in love with an Israeli man. The second, And Tomorrow the Entire World, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2020, is about an idealistic student who joins an Antifa collective to fight the fascist menace of neo-Nazism spreading across Germany. It has been chosen to represent Germany in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category and is set to begin streaming on Netflix in April.
Von Heinz showed her latest film to her actors and it won them over. Patinkin said in a statement, “I knew instantly I was in the hands of a true filmmaker. She tells a riveting story in every frame and the performances are as truthful as I could ever wish for.”
Dunham said, “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.” She added that she was looking forward to working with Patinkin.
Von Heinz said that the children of survivors “have to find out everything by themselves, and that’s what Iron Box is about. It’s also a story that we have in my family. It’s a traumatized generation. But we’re not telling a story that is dark and sad. Like Hanna’s Journey and hopefully also And Tomorrow the Entire World, it will be emotional and entertaining.”