Paul Schrader has signed on to direct Holocaust drama Adam Resurrected, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Based on the novel by Yoram Kaniuk the film will tell the story of Adam Stein, a former circus clown who was allowed to live by the Nazis so that he could entertain fellow Jews on their way to the gas chamber.

Now residing in an asylum for Holocaust survivors in the Negev desert, he engages in a constant struggle to make sense of the world in which reality has become blurred.