My Neighbor Adolf

by Leon Prudovsky

What if… my neighbor is Adolf Hitler?

Colombia, May 1960, just a few days after the abduction of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents in Argentina. Polsky, a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor, lives in the remote Colombian countryside. He spends his days playing chess and tending his beloved rose bushes. One day, when a mysterious old German man moves in next-door, he suspects that his new neighbor is... Adolf Hitler. Since nobody believes him, he embarks on a detective mission to find the evidence. But, in order to gather evidence, he will need to be closer to his neighbor than he would like. So close that the two could almost become friends.

Genre / Language / Length
Drama / English / 96 minutes
Original title
My Neighbor Adolf
directed by
Leon Prudovsky (FIVE HOURS FROM PARIS)
director of photography
Radek Ladczuk
screenplay by
Leon Prudovsky (FIVE HOURS FROM PARIS)Dmitry Malinsky
produced by
2-Team Productions and Film Produkcja in co-production with Vandalo and United King Film
Cast
  • David Hayman (THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS)
  • Udo Kier (DOWNSIZING, MELANCHOLIA, BLADE, THE PAINTED BIRD)
  • Olivia Silhavy (WOMAN IN GOLD)

Press Quotes

“Udo Kier steals the show in this bittersweet comedy. Building on his acclaimed turns in Bacurau and Swan Song, he deploys his distinctive ice-blue eyes and richly sonorous voice to entertaining and touching effect here”
Neil Young, Screen Daily

“An original, intelligent, and surreal comedy… a controversial account of distrust, truth in the news, history and fear of the people around you. With two excellent actors. Condensed in the style of a thriller, the film plays on the dismantling of certainties and is a clear reflection on the stereotypes that are dragged along behind.Sometimes the horrors and traumas experienced prevent us from seeing and clarifying. Using a pure form of irony, the brilliant director speaks about a heavy truth and the artistic result is excellent.”
Gaia Serena Simionati, taxidrivers.it

“All the ingredients to make a daring film are there, on a razor edge that could make it fall to the side of the plate. However, Leon Prudovsky, and his co-writer Dmitry Malinsky, never fall into the trap of excess and master wonderfully the narrative balance oscillating between drama and situational comedy - with a surprising twist at the end. Polsky is touching in his meticulous and relentless search for clues to prove that he is right, even if it feels futile and desperate. Herzog intrigues us - if we remain skeptical, like the embassy liaison officer, as to his identity, we feel that evil aura surrounding him. The baroque location in which the Israeli director sets his scene adds to the strangeness of the situation. We are in the Colombian countryside, but if these two houses, isolated and dilapidated, were in the Carpathian mountains, we would not be more surprised.The situational comedy is linked to moments of painful reminiscence, bringing to My Neighbor Adolf that touch of bittersweet pain that emerges when we look at a photograph of those who have left us, testimony of happy days torn from reality to fly away in the refuge of memory.”
“…animosity gives way to curiosity; a kind of bromance develops between these two beings lost in their solitude, the black comedy is surreptitiously transformed into a kind of senior buddy movie. With David Hayman who gives face and body in a transcendental way to the victim of the Shoah, and Udo Kier mastering from start to finish this role playing on the complex register of ambiguity, Leon Prudovsky has created the perfect couple to embody the spirit of his film.
Malik Berkat, J-Mag

„Prudovsky feels at home in the comedic genre, and with this film he also taps the full potential of black comedy… it is an universal story of a friendship between two lonely men who discover that they have more in common than they first believe.fast editing provides a pleasant drive and entertainment.“
Teresa Vena, Kino Zeit

„A well-told film, with an adequate cast, good cinematography by the award-winning Radek Ladczuk, and careful editing by Hervé Schneid, the editor of 'Amélie.' 'My Neighbor Adolf' deserves, beyond controversy, a warm success.“
Ugo Brusaporco, La Regione

„the story gradually manages to captivate us with an excellent gimmick that then goes on to per-perfectly close the tale. The screenplay is chiseled on the spasmodic search for evidence - the eyes, the dogs, the paintings, the outbrakes of anger..., with sometimes hilarious stretches, but much of the credit goes to a couple who manages to lend grotesque credibility to two characters with high improbability: David Hayman is masterful in giving face and soul to Marek, lost in his surly desolation, but ready to regain energy and interest in an attempt to expose the oh-so-cumbersome neighbor whom he considers, on top of everything else, the exterminator of his entire family. Udo Kier, with flowing beard has perhaps an even more arduous task because his Herzog is character always on the edge, cannot, and must not, come across as sympathetic – it would lose all shades of credibility – but he manages to be ambiguous enough to keep alive the very framework that is then the feature that sustains the whole story.“
Antonello Catacchio, Il Manifesto

Selected Festivals & Awards

Locarno International Film Festival
Film Festival Hamburg
Haifa International Film Festival
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