ADAM RESURRECTED

Stollman was exhilarated by the monumental task at hand. “I grew up in Israel where the
book is considered a classic and everyone has either read it or knows of it,” the screenwriter notes.
“It’s a part of the culture, which made it both a daunting and an exciting opportunity. It’s also a very
unusual tone, a mix of the kind of incisive humor Americans might associate with Philip Roth, of
someone who is very alive and outrageously sexual, along with the more lyrical, magical qualities of a
Jose Saramago or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”
He continues: “The novel was the first to really look back on the Holocaust with biting humor.
Few Israeli writers would dare to do that but Kaniuk was an iconoclast. I think he came up with one of
the best approaches to introducing this inherently dark material to a younger generation, to a different
kind of audience – with a sense of humor and irony that makes it all the more human and
approachable. That’s what makes the story so compelling and timeless.”
Stollman would read and re-read the book trying to get closer to its internal essence. “It’s an
amazing, masterful work that is rich, dense and written in a complete stream-of-consciousness,
jumping back and forth in time without any conventional structure,” he observes. “So I had to find a
way to translate that to the screen. For me, Adam was the anchor. Through Adam, the audience is
able to move back and forth in time, to see how his past has informed his approach to the present in
so many ways.”
“As I was writing, I also thought a lot about a quote from Emerson that appears in the book:
‘man is a God in ruins.’ The idea that man has the potential to be divine, yet with an overriding
instinct for depravity is a very Kaniuk-esque idea and one that helped me to get a grasp on Adam’s
character.”
It would take Stollman and Bleiberg two years of close creative collaboration, but they
emerged with a script that began attracting attention.
When Bleiberg met with Werner Wirsing, the German producer of Julie Delpy’s 2 DAYS IN
PARIS and head of 3L Filmproduktion, Wirsing was moved to tears by the story of Adam Stein. “He
said ‘I have to be a part of this film,’” Bleiberg recalls.
For Wirsing, the project became deeply personal. “I have long believed that Germans who
were born after World War II have more responsibility towards the future, a responsibility to work for
peace and to enhance German-Jewish relations,” he explains. “So, when Ehud came to me with this
very special film, it was a sign to me that this was a chance to do something that has not been done.
ADAM RESURRECTED is the first movie that involves the Holocaust to be produced by a Jewish
Israeli and a non-Jewish German. Ehud and I also made the unusual decision that we would not have
any German actors playing Nazis.”
He continues: “I think that this is a very important story, one that shows the young people of
the world what human beings can do but also points to a better future and a way towards peace.”
Complex and emotional responses were echoed by others in Hollywood, but along with
admiration came resistance.
“Some amazing directors responded to the material but were unwilling to take the project
head-on. They were afraid to touch the subject,” Bleiberg explains. “It took me some time to get the
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