Things didn't get much better once they got to Edmonton, Canada, where they moved into the basement of his aunt, who lived on welfare. After his mother got re-married, Vadim felt betrayed and left home, soon drifting into a life of crime.
Finally, Perelman shaped up. He earned his high school diploma equivalence, and went to the University of Alberta. In a film appreciation class, he watched a documentary on the making of Fiddler on the Roof, and was hooked.
"I walked out into the snow, and thought, 'This is what I want to do, I want to make movies,'" Perelman recalled. "For the first time in my life I had direction."
He got into film school in Toronto by telling the admissions board that his father had been a famous director in the Soviet Union, and he was going to film school to complete the last movie that his father had been working on.
Fleeing the Revolution
Later, Perelman directed music videos and public service announcements—among them "anti-smoking" and "stay-in-school" campaigns—before moving to Los Angeles, where he became a successful director of commercials.
Looking for a chance to direct his first feature film, he turned down standard Hollywood fare before discovering House of Sand and Fog.
"I cried reading the book," he said. "I knew I needed to tell the story. I've been one of those people—trying to find a little piece of the world that you can call your own."
But Perelman was not the only one involved with the film who could relate to the immigrant experience.
Colonel Behrani's wife, Nadi, is played by Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who fled Iran during its Islamic revolution in 1978.
"We traveled by road to Turkey, and it was snowing in the mountains," said Aghdashloo. "It was very dangerous. I felt like I was going to die."
She eventually landed in the United States, where she's performed in many Farsi-speaking plays, and featured in American television series, such as Columbo and Matlock.
A Metaphor for War
The book House of Sand and Fog was inspired in part by a newspaper story about a woman who lost her house and in part by the author's long-term involvement with an Iranian woman whose father had been a colonel in the Shah's air force.
(Sir Ben Kingsley, who portrays Colonel Behrani in the film, developed his Iranian accent from listening to audio tapes of speeches by the deposed Shah of Iran.)
"The story is really about war," said Dubus, who sees his story as a metaphor for larger conflicts, like the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. "Everyone is capable of terrible acts."
Perelman, meanwhile, is next set to direct The Talisman, a fantasy adventure to be produced by Steven Spielberg.
Not bad for a kid who once used to read his books by whatever street light he could come by.
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