Perelman made his feature film directorial debut in 2003 with House of Sand and Fog, following a career as a commercial director.

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."

Over the next three years, Perelman directed multinational television commercials for Microsoft, General Motors, Panasonic, Nike, Airwalk, AT&T, Sony PlayStation, Coors and MasterCard, and music videos including Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You."

Since great scripts are a rare commodity, I realized that I have to create my own opportunities and not wait for the right project to come along — for fate to smile upon me.

Perelman got Shawn Otto to adapt the novel for the screen, brought Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly into the project and raised financing for what would become his first feature film.

Harvey Weinstein offered $500,000, a producer credit and a script of his choosing from the Miramax slate to let Todd Field direct instead, but Perelman declined.