After urging from his parents, 14-year-old Alan Silverman (Haas) develops an emotional friendship with Naomi Kirshenbaum (Zaoui), who has been deeply troubled since seeing her father killed by the Nazis in Europe.

Alan & Naomi received the National Book Awards For Children's Literature in Germany and Austria,[4][5][6] and the Dutch Silver Pencil Prize.

[3] Alan & Naomi was the first project from Leucadia Film Corporation,[1] a Salt Lake City, Utah company founded in 1989[9] "by producers Sterling Van Wagenen and David Anderson and entrepreneur Ian Cumming".

[1] It was also Van Wagenen's theatrical directorial debut; in the mid-1980s, he had also helmed a Holocaust television documentary called Inside the Vicious Heart.

[1] On February 8, 1999, Canadian family-entertainment company CINAR acquired the film as part of its purchase of the twelve-title Leucadia library.