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Set in 1960, Leon Prudovky’s tale of a Polish Holocaust survivor who suspects his imposing new neighbour is the Führer himself veers towards silliness

Russian-born Israeli film-maker Leonid Prudovsky has confected an unsatisfying tonal oddity: a jokey-sentimental drama with weird slashes of actual historical pain. The year is 1960 and a lonely, cantankerous Polish Holocaust survivor called Polsky (played by David Hayman) is living all on his own in a village in Colombia. Unhappy Polsky has a psychosomatic prostate complaint which makes urinating difficult; he takes what happiness he can in chess and growing a special strain of black roses.

Polsky is astonished when a high-handed and unpleasantly secretive German expat moves in to the house next door, wearing what appears to be a false beard: a Herr Herzog, played by Udo Kier. This oddly familiar-looking figure has an alsatian which makes a nuisance of itself in Polsky’s garden; he...

"You are… a good neighbor." Signature Ent. in the UK has revealed the official trailer for an indie comedy titled My Neighbor Adolf, made by a Russian-Israeli filmmaker. Based on a true story, set in Colombia in the 1960s. Polsky is a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor who is now living in the remote Colombian countryside. He mostly spends his days playing chess and tending to his beloved rose bushes. However, when a mysterious old German man moves in next door he begins to suspect his new neighbor is… Adolf Hitler. Since nobody believes him, he embarks on a detective mission to find the evidence. But, in order to prove his suspicions, Polsky will need to be closer to his neighbor than he would like – so close that the two could almost become friends. Starring David Hayman as Polsky and Udo Kier as his neighbor, along with Danharry Colorado and Olivia Silhavy.

In “My Neighbor Adolf,” a Polish Holocaust survivor living in South America suspects that the belligerent German who’s just moved in next door could be none other than der Führer himself. How could that be? Hitler shot himself in his bunker at the end of the war. Or did he? Director Leon Prudovsky’s middling mind game pits David Hayman and prolific German character actor Udo Kier against one another in what could have been a sly, “Sleuth”-style two-hander. But the tonally uneven movie isn’t prepared for its own premise: If the man’s hunch is correct, what are the implications of making friends/enemies with evil?

Years earlier, Malek Polsky (Hayman) sat opposite Hitler at the World Chess Championship in Berlin. He swears he’d recognize “those dead blue eyes” anywhere — and now they’re staring right back at him over the rickety wooden fence that separates their properties.

Dark comedy-drama “My Neighbor Adolf,” which will world premiere in Piazza Grande at the Locarno Film Festival, has debuted its trailer. The film stars David Hayman, Udo Kier and Olivia Silhavy, and is directed by Israeli helmer Leon Prudovsky. Beta Cinema is handling world sales.

The film, which Hayman has described as a cross between “Rear Window” and “Grumpy Old Men,” is set in Colombia in May 1960, just after Israel’s abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Polsky, a lonely 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.