A Real Pain (15)

A Real Pain is a 2024 comedy-drama film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, the film stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in honour of their late grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. Its supporting cast includes Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes.

The film received several accolades, including two nominations at the 97th Academy Awards and 78th British Academy Film Awards, and four at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards; Culkin won Best Supporting Actor at each ceremony, while Eisenberg won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. It was named as one of the top ten films of 2024 by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review.

A Real Pain's Polish premiere took place at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews as the opening film of the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.

Michał Dymek, the cinematographer, is a native of Warsaw and was raised with historical awareness of the events that occurred in his country. His deep knowledge of his hometown helped Eisenberg film montages that would highlight Poland's beauty.

Eisenberg comes from a secular Jewish background and has Polish ancestry. For twenty years, he had struggled with answering the question of how he could reconcile his "modern daily challenges" with his Ashkenazi ancestors' historical trauma as Holocaust victims and survivors. In March 2025, he was granted a Polish citizenship by President Andrzej Duda, following the success of the film. Eisenberg described the citizenship as "an honour of a lifetime and something I have been very interested in for two decades.