A Real Pain + Q&A (Southampton)

The Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton invites you to a screening and roundtable event on Jesse Eisenberg’s 2025 film A Real Pain at Harbour Lights Picturehouse cinema on 24 February at 5.30pm.

Released in the US in 2024 and nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, A Real Pain is Jesse Eisenberg’s new comedy road movie-turned Holocaust film. Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play Jewish-American cousins David and Benji, who travel to Poland from New York to the home of their late grandmother, who survived the Holocaust. The film delves into issues of generational trauma, dark tourism and the fraught legacy of the Holocaust for the protagonists as they sign up to a ‘Holocaust tour’ to discover their Jewish roots in Poland.

The roundtable will involve a discussion between scholars from the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/Non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton, including Dr Emily-Rose Baker, a specialist on Holocaust cinema, Dr Janek Gryta, Polish historian and convenor of the MA Holocaust at Southampton, and Prof Tony Kushner, a preeminent expert on Jewish migration and Holocaust memory and representation.

Chaired by Charlie Knight, a doctoral researcher and outreach fellow at the Institute, the discussion will focus on the film’s representation of Holocaust memory in Poland and the US, its historical context, the role of the third-generation survivor perspectives, and ethical questions surrounding the use of comedy in Holocaust narratives. It will be followed by a public Q&A.