A Real Pain (Polish: Prawdziwy ból) is a 2024 buddy road comedy-drama film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg.

Using the funds left by their late grandmother, the Kaplans planned a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in hopes of seeing the home she grew up in and connect with their family history.

After arriving at Warsaw, David and Benji meet with their tour group members: Mark and Diane, a retired married couple from Shaker Heights, Ohio; Marcia, a recent divorcee from California; and Eloge, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism.

In August 2022, Screen Daily exclusively announced that Jesse Eisenberg would write, direct, and star in A Real Pain opposite Kieran Culkin.

[9] A Real Pain is Eisenberg's second feature film as a writer-director and second collaboration with Fruit Tree, following When You Finish Saving the World (2022).

[11] Eisenberg was unfamiliar with Culkin's work prior to developing A Real Pain, but cast him based on his essence and his sister's recommendation.

[15] Eisenberg initially wanted to play Benji, as he possesses some of his characteristics, but the producers suggested that he should not take on an "unhinged" performance while directing at the same time.

[14] He admitted to Vulture that he had "17,000 thoughts" about casting a non-Jewish actor in a role intended for a Jewish character, "and where I come out is [Culkin] gave me an amazing gift by helping to tell this story that is very personal for my family.

[17] He tried to back out of A Real Pain two weeks before filming began, citing his need to not be away from his family as the main reason,[18][19] but he loved Eisenberg's "beautiful" script and When You Finish Saving the World.

[20] The story focused on two college friends—one of whom is grounded, while the other is impulsive—who travel to East Asia in search of the "experience of a lifetime", only to find themselves in a yurt on an ecotourism center.

[21] As he was ready to scrap the project, an advertisement for a tour of Auschwitz concentration camp with complimentary lunch appeared on his computer screen.

[23][24] For twenty years, he has 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.

[27][28] Because Eisenberg started writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, he used the street view feature on Google Maps and pictures he took when he traveled to Poland with his wife in 2008 to scout locations and take the tour that the characters were going on.

"[30] The score for A Real Pain is almost entirely composed of piano pieces written by the Polish virtuoso Frédéric Chopin, and performed by Israeli-Canadian classical pianist Tzvi Erez.

[56] Christian Blauvelt, the digital director of IndieWire, surveyed 166 journalists who attended the festival to determine the best competition titles of the season.

The website's consensus reads: "Led by a scene-stealing turn from Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a powerfully funny, emotionally resonant dramedy that finds writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg playing to his strengths on either side of the camera.

"[2] He praised Eisenberg's "impeccable" judgment and great skill at "balancing sardonic wit with piercing solemnity in a movie full of feeling, in which no emotion is unearned.

"[2] Owen Gleiberman for Variety welcomed Eisenberg into a "hallowed company" of actors who turned out to be born filmmakers, such as Greta Gerwig, Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper.

"[60] Bill Goodykontz, in a review for The Arizona Republic, thought Eisenberg pulled off a magic trick by making a film with "backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting.

[63] Ty Burr for The Washington Post wrote that he "walks a line between obnoxiousness and delight; it’s a performance both liberating and touched by a deeper, more inarticulate sadness.

"[64] Manohla Dargis, writing for The New York Times, thought Culkin was "shockingly great" and articulated Benji's inner turmoil through a "transparently readable, sometimes viscerally destabilizing" manner.

[66] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle lauded his "dominating", tour de force performance, writing that Eisenberg invented a new film genre called "the Kieran Culkin movie.

"[67] Film journalists from Collider,[68] The Hollywood Reporter,[69] Rolling Stone,[70] Time,[71] Vulture,[72] and TheWrap declared Culkin's performance one of the finest of the year.