Speaking ahead of the Polish premiere, the 41-year-old known for films such as The Social Network, Now You See Me and Zombieland, says the film had been inspired by his own family history.

First shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January this year to critical acclaim, the film tells the story of two childhood friends and cousins, David and Benji, who try to reestablish connection with one another and with their family’s roots in Poland following the death of their beloved grandmother, Dory.

He says: “Sometimes they find it, sometimes they miss [...] like when they go to visit the [old family] house and [...] they don't feel the connection. Something is missing. They see the building that their family lived in, which is the actual building my family lived in. And something is off.”

The grandmother shares her name with Eisenberg’s real-life great aunt Doris, who was born in Krasnystaw, a town in southeastern Poland and which is shown in the film. The director says she had a great impact on his life, describing her as his “mentor.” The close relationship also had an impact on his attitude toward the country from which his family immigrated to the U.S.

“For years she would tell me about this amazing relationship she had with Poles,” Eisenberg says. “For a lot of American Jews, they hear the opposite. They hear: ‘Oh, the Poles didn’t like us or something.’ But that’s just not my experience at all.

“And so maybe I have an unusual relationship in that, to me, I want to reconnect to Poland,” he says, adding that he thinks it is important to “see the history in its complexity, rather than to see the history as one of pure tragedy.”

What added to Eisenberg’s positive experience was working with the film’s 150-strong Polish film crew “who are helping me to tell my family’s story,” and for whom he had nothing but praise.

He says: “Every person who worked on the crew was a real artist.”