Vadim Perelman

Vadim Perelman (; born 8 September 1963) is a Ukrainian-Canadian-American film director. Perelman made his feature film directorial debut in 2003 with House of Sand and Fog, following a career as a commercial director. The film, nominated for three Academy Awards, also marks his first screenplay credit. Perelman was drawn to the story, having been shaped by his own immigrant experience. Early life and work Born in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR (now in Ukraine), Perelman was an only child who lived with his extended family in a communal flat. He is from a Jewish background. When Perelman was nine, his father was killed in a car accident. Five years later, he and his mother were granted permission to leave Kyiv and lived in Vienna for two months before moving to Rome, a transfer point in the 1980s for Jewish emigrants from the USSR. Remembering that period, Perelman likens himself to the kids in Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados — a street urchin "always searching for a hunk of bread or a scam to pull." He supported himself and his young mother in this fashion for a year. When a Canadian visa finally came, they left for that country where Perelman would ultimately build a new life and start his career. Following some rather tumultuous teenage years, Perelman finally began to concentrate on his formal education. He attended the University of Alberta, majoring in physics and maths, before a sophomore-year class in film-making changed his focus. Moving to Toronto, he studied film at Ryerson University's School of Image Arts for two years, before launching his own Toronto-based production house, called Canned Films. After honing his skills directing and editing music videos, he decided to move to Los Angeles to further his career.