A REAL PAIN 15

A Real Pain has been one of the low budget ‘indie’ hits of 2025, and won a BAFTA in February for Best Original Screenplay. It is written and directed by the actor Jesse Eisenberg, and he is also one of the two leads, alongside Kieran Culkin (one of the stars of TV show Succession). They play cousins (David and Benji) who take a ‘holocaust’ tour to Poland, in memory of their grandmother who escaped the camps and managed to get to America. This is a personal and thoughtful film from Eisenberg, and a key theme is how our modern pampered lives compare to what our forebears had to go through. It also examines the relationship between these two men who were very close when younger, but now seem to have drifted apart. Whilst in no way a comedy, A Real Pain has moments of great (often black) humour as well as poignancy.

Both leads are superb and Culkin swept the board at awards season, winning a BAFTA and an Oscar for best supporting actor. A Real Pain was also a huge hit with critics, and in the Guardian Peter Bradshaw gave it a five star review: “With no great fanfare, Jesse Eisenberg has just given us a masterpiece. This is an effortlessly witty, fluent and astringent comedy with a very serious overcurrent. It is a road movie which is partly about the Holocaust and about America’s third-generation attempt at coming to terms with it, at confronting what their parents and grandparents found too painfully recent to revisit, or necessary to forget in order to survive. And partly it’s about family, male friendship and growing older.”

A Real Pain is 1 hour 30 minutes long, plus an interval.