Director: Jesse Eisenberg

Stars: Jessie Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey

Writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial effort is an affecting, amusing and thematically rich two-hander. Eisenberg is David, a middle-aged Jewish New Yorker travelling to Poland, along with his cousin Benji (Culkin) so they can pay their respects to their late Polish grandmother. She was interned in a concentration camp during the war, but survived and was able to make her way to America. On arriving, the cousins join a tour group of Jewish American tourists hosted by the gauche Brit James (Sharpe). David is a buttoned-up conventional married man, Benji is more a loose cannon, irascible and filter-free. Chiefly due to Benji’s lack of propriety, the cousin’s relationship becomes frayed as the trip progresses. Eisenberg deftly juggles the disparate elements in a picture that is part odd couple comedy, and part complex study of midlife crises, guilt and generational trauma, as the two bicker and muse on their own disappointments, all the while mindful of the massive trauma suffered by previous generations. The cinematography by Michal Dymek, who shot Jerzy Skolimowski’s wonderfully kinetic donkey picture, E.O. is low key and stately, complimented by a Chopin score. Culkin, who is almost playing a more amiable version of bratty misanthropic Ronan, his character in ‘Succession’, is great, skilfully conveying the vulnerability beneath Benji’s bluster.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Bluesky: @davidwilloughby.bsky.social