The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong

Director: Dana Ben-Ari

Producers: Dana Ben-Ari, Joanne Nerenberg, Kate Novack, Nikola Duravcevic

Editor: Kim Hall

Premiered at Woodstock Film Festival, 2024. Released by The New Yorker September 23, 2025

When bestselling Soviet-Jewish novelist Gary Shteyngart wrote about his botched circumcision for the New Yorker, he sparked a viral debate about the age-old practice. In The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, Shteyngart delves deeper into the trauma he suffered at age seven, shortly after his family’s arrival in America. On the surface, the film is about surgery gone wrong. But on a more profound level it’s about the immigrant experience, competing ideas of manliness, the limits of the redemptive power of fame, and coming to terms with betrayals by parents, religion, and country. Shteyngart invites us upstate on walks by the Hudson, where he spends hours dreaming up book ideas, and on his New York City adventures. Remarkably unvanquished by the ordeal he calls “shlong-gate,” Shteyngart's singular tragic-comic voice prevails. "This country broke my penis," he says in the film, "but it couldn't break my spirit.”