(JTA) — An Oscar for “A Real Pain” wasn’t Jesse Eisenberg’s only win this week — he also received citizenship in Poland, where he filmed the movie about reckoning with one’s family’s Holocaust history.
Polish president Andrzej Duda handed citizenship to Eisenberg at a ceremony in New York on Tuesday. “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.
Eisenberg directed and starred in “A Real Pain,” which follows two American Jewish cousins who travel to Poland to learn more about their recently deceased grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. The story draws on his own family, including his great-aunt Doris, who fled Poland for the United States in 1938.
Doris’s death in 2019, at the age of 106, prompted Eisenberg to probe his Polish ancestry. At the film’s Polish premiere in November, he called said it was “my love letter to Poland” and said filming there had inspired him to seek citizenship.
On Sunday, Eisenberg’s co-star Kieran Culkin — who plays his cousin — won the Oscar for best supporting actor. Eisenberg was also nominated for best original screenplay but lost to “Anora.”
Many filming locations for “A Real Pain” were part of Eisenberg’s family history, such as the southeastern town of Krasnystaw, home to his great-aunt and many other family members who were killed in the Holocaust. Last year, the town council awarded him honorary local citizenship.
One scene was shot in an apartment that his family fled in 1938; others were filmed at the Majdanek concentration camp, the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the Polin Museum, dedicated to the 1,000-year history of Polish Jews. At a celebration of the museum’s first decade in September, Eisenberg spoke virtually about his visits to Poland.
During the ceremony with Duda, Eisenberg called his new citizenship “the honor of a lifetime.” He also said that he pondered Polish citizenship for two decades, but happened on a stark moment of connection while making “A Real Pain.”
“Something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family lived in this place for far longer than we’ve lived in New York,” said Eisenberg. “And of course the history ended so tragically, but in addition to that tragedy of history, it’s also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection anymore to Poland. That saddened me and confirmed to me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible.”
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