'A Real Pain': A Poignant Comedy-Drama About Two Disparate Cousins On a Heritage Tour Through Poland

A Real Pain (2024) is a poignant and comedic drama that follows cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) as they travel together on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland. After the death of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, the two agree to finally take the trip she once planned for them, driven by a shared sense of responsibility to honor her memory.

Arriving in Warsaw, David and Benji meet their fellow tour group members: tour guide James (Will Sharpe), a mild-mannered gentleman from Yorkshire; Marcia (Jennifer Grey), a recent divorcée from California; Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy), a retired couple from Ohio; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism. As the group tours Holocaust memorials and historic sites in Warsaw, Lublin and Majdanek, David and Benji are forced to confront not only their fractured relationship but also the emotional weight of their family history. As they ultimately journey toward their grandmother’s former home in Krasnystaw, David’s anxious rigidity and Benji’s unruly charm clash with growing intensity, pushing their bond to its absolute limits.

Written and directed by Eisenberg, A Real Pain sidesteps traditional redemptive or moralizing arcs to explore the raw, unresolved complexities of inherited trauma and disconnection. Culkin all but steals the show in his Academy Award–winning performance as Benji, channeling a manic vulnerability that feels both dangerously unmoored and deeply human. Exploring themes of grief, identity, and intergenerational trauma through a refreshingly unsentimental lens, Eisenberg delivers a thoughtful, often bittersweet meditation on the difficulty of healing.

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