The movie that started as a passion project for Jesse Eisenberg has turned into an awards season darling.
A Real Pain, described as a Holocaust road trip film, netted the writer/actor/director a raft of trophies and delivered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Kieran Culkin.
Following the film’s success, Eisenberg was given another honour, as he was awarded Polish citizenship by President Andrzej Duda in a New York ceremony on Tuesday night (Wednesday AEDT).
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“This is an honour of a lifetime,” he said after being handed over the certificate in a red folder.
The actor revealed he was inspired to “reconnect” with his heritage, acknowledging that his family lived longer in Poland than their new home of New York, where they’ve been the past 80 years.
“I am pleased that people from around the world remember their origins, that their ancestors came from Poland, and want to connect with our country,” Duda said during the presentation.
A Real Pain tells the fictional story of cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) taking a Jewish history tour to honour their late grandmother, when old family tensions arise as they reconnect to their roots.
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Eisenberg previously described the movie as “a love letter to Poland” and began writing the semi-autobiographical piece as lengthy emails.
He later turned it into the script, which earned him a number of original screenplay trophies.
This included the BAFTA Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and Satellite Awards, along with Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.
Eisenberg also took home a screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Social Network star decided to star in and direct the film, as well as producing it alongside long-time friend actress Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCary.
Eisenberg told 9honey Celebrity last year the Oscar-winner’s input into the project was priceless.
“Emma’s really a genius,” he said at the movie’s London Film Festival premiere in October..
“Obviously, we know her as a brilliant actress but her kind of savviness and acumen about movies in general and entertainment in general is so astute and so brilliant.”
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Eisenberg credits Stone, with whom he first worked on Zombieland in 2009, with the single change he made to the movie from development to completion.
“I only made one change from the first draft to the movie that you see and the one change was adding this funny scene where the characters kind of get lost on the train and have to sneak on another train,” he explained.
“And it was because she gave me the one great note I got, which was, ‘It’d be great to see them together again after being on this trip with other people. It’d be great to see them alone together again, like they used to be’.
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“And it was like, ‘God, that’s amazing’ – it’s the best note I got. She’s truly brilliant.”
Stone also saved the day when Culkin tried to pull out of the movie two weeks before filming was due to begin.
The actress and producer managed to convince her ex-boyfriend to stay on with the project and was seen congratulating him after he won his first Oscar on Sunday.
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