Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain

Published on November 6, 2023

After launching When You Finish Saving the World (which we called “while neither revolutionary nor rudimentary, it’s a surprisingly sober and mature portrait on animosity and forgiveness,”) at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival edition (sans Park City premiere due to the pandemic of course) it would be fitting for Jesse Eisenberg to have that Sundance experience at a place like the Eccles for his sophomore directorial gig. Plus this is an acquisitions title. Filmed in New York and in Warsaw, Poland at the beginning of this past summer, A Real Pain saw Eisenberg move in front of the camera to be joined by Kieran Culkin and Ellora Torchia in what is tipped as a semi-autobiographical project. EO cinematographer Michal Dymek joined the project.

Gist: A bitter-sweet story of the relationship between cousins Benji (Culkin), and David (Eisenberg), who travel to Poland to discover their roots after the death of their grandmother – they end up joining a Holocaust tour.

Production Co./Producers: Fruit Tree’s Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Emma Stone.

Prediction: Premieres.

Sales: TBD.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).