A REAL PAIN Special Screenings

Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the standout sophomore feature from multi-hyphenate writer-director Jesse Eisenberg (WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD) is an odd-couple road movie for the ages, an irreverent, funny, but deeply empathetic comedy that doubles as emotional exploration of complex family dynamics and intergenerational trauma. Once-close cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are polar opposites who have drifted apart in the maelstrom of adulthood. When the passing of their beloved grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, sparks a chance to reconnect on a tour through Poland to visit her homeland, the pair find themselves frequently at odds, as Benji’s penchant for loose cannon chaos (and weed) clashes with David’s buttoned-up calm and sense of order. Alongside an eclectic group of fellow travelers (portrayed by terrific supporting cast that includes Kurt Egyiawan, Jennifer Grey and Will Sharpe) and facing the overwhelming history embedded in the sites scarred by the genocide of World War II, David and Benji move ever closer to reconciling their complicated personal and familial histories with the people they have become. Oscillating seamlessly between wicked comedy and poignant reflection, A REAL PAIN is a profound meditation on family, kinship and the hope that can be found in the most unlikely of places. –Abbie Algar