I just lived this film. It gets a lot right about Jews and Poland

There’s a lot that A Real Pain gets right about Polish Holocaust tours, from the eerie stillness of Majdanek, explored through a series of mostly silent shots, to the information overload from the non-Jewish tour guide, when Jewish people need to acknowledge what is, in fact, missing.

But it also glosses over a lot that, had it been included, may have raised some eyebrows in the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.

A Real Pain, which headlined this year’s Jewish International Film Festival follows the journey of cousins David and Benji on a week-long tour of Poland to discover their late-grandmother’s pre-Holocaust world.

Earlier this year, I also went on a week-long tour of Poland with a mostly non-Jewish group and two fabulous Jewish tour guides to learn how modern Europeans relate to the memory of the Holocaust.

Seeing parts of my journey reflected back at me on the screen was as cathartic as the tour was traumatic, and I felt the need to both honour the rawness of the film and shed some light on the more difficult aspects of Poland which the film only hints at.

If you’ve seen A Real Pain, you’ll remember the train scene, with Benji's emotional outburst declaring that Jews shouldn’t be in first class, when a couple of generations ago, we would have been herded to the back like cattle.

I had a similar thought as I hurtled through the beautiful, green countryside, in a semi-private cabin shared with an adorable blonde, blue eyed baby named Teodor, and his doting mother, who chatted with me the entire ride. I felt conflicted knowing that had we met 78 years prior, this woman would have likely turned me over to the authorities.

One of the most interesting aspects of A Real Pain is its awareness of the relationship between modern day Poland and the Holocaust.