NEW YORK -- For too many, the Holocaust languishes somewhere between old news and ancient history. And as for young people -- well, what could be the relevance of anything that happened before rock music or TV?
Certainly, Hannah Stern sets other priorities ahead of her heritage. An all-too-typical 16-year-old kid in New Rochelle, N.Y., she feels put upon when her parents insist she drop everything to celebrate the Jewish holiday Passover.She begs to skip the Seder: "It's a waste of time."
"We're going because it's important," says her mom.
"Why," Hannah counters, "is it important?"
The answer to that question reveals itself for young and old in "The Devil's Arithmetic," a Showtime original film. Showtime is making a major point of the film's for-all-ages appeal. So do Dustin Hoffman and Mimi Rogers, who as executive producers were driving forces in making the film. It premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. MST.
Based on Jane Yolen's 1988 novel of the same title, "The Devil's Arithmetic" thrusts unsuspecting Hannah back in time, to a place where Seders and Judaism were deemed capital offenses -- German-occupied Poland.
There she finds a renewed sense of family, while encountering the horrors of her family's past. She is literally absorbed in a chapter of history that, from the comfortable distance of the 1990s, she had never cared to explore.
"The Devil's Arithmetic" wants its audience -- especially youngsters -- to care. And how could they fail to, after sharing Hannah's reality check?
In no way does it water down its depiction of Nazi-waged genocide. But this beautifully made film knows when to speak in hushed tones. Even for young viewers, it should prove disturbing, but not traumatizing.
"I think the child has to be old enough to have some frame of reference," Rogers said, "and to be able to ask coherent questions about the film afterward."
For kids, the Holocaust can seem too horrible to be true.
"But I think taking the journey with a contemporary teen and seeing it through her eyes makes it real, makes it understandable for young people," said Rogers, who also appears in a cameo as Hannah's mother.
Hannah is played by Kirsten Dunst, the 16-year-old actress whose previous films include "Little Women" and "Wag the Dog."
"I had read the book before," Kirsten said. "So as soon as I found out they wanted me to play this role, of course I wanted to do it."
The film also stars Brittany Murphy ("David and Lisa") as Rivkah, a Polish girl in 1941 who befriends Hannah, certain that they're cousins. And Louise Fletcher, best known for her Oscar-winning performance in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," is Hannah's Aunt Eva, at whose home the Seder takes place.
"You wouldn't understand what it was like in the camp," she gently tells Hannah. "This experience is so far from your world." But not for long.
Scenes of Hannah's collision with the past were filmed last fall near Vilnius, Lithuania, on a muddy, desolate site designed to resemble Auschwitz.
"The first day we pulled up to the concentration camp, I was shocked," Kirsten said. "I couldn't hold back my tears. Even when you see it for yourself, you can't imagine how it must have been."
Donna Deitch, the film's director, found the shoot no less jolting.
Her projects include the Oprah Winfrey TV film "The Women of Brewster Place" -- and numerous episodes of "NYPD Blue."
"Though I had directed my share of scenes involving murders and people getting beat up, I had never done anything that involved this degree of evil," Deitch said. "I was a little unprepared for what it would be like.
"For instance, in the hanging scene, when two of the girls watching hug each other, suddenly I think, 'The Nazis would never let them do that,' and I'm yelling at the guard, 'Go over there and break those two girls up.' "
"It was scary doing certain scenes," Kirsten agreed. "When we were walking to the gas chamber, sometimes it would feel too real."
Never fear. At the end of the film, Hannah returns home. A fateful link between then and now, she will always remember what she went through. And Kirsten Dunst will remember, too.
"I feel proud to help tell the story," she said. "We just have to keep making movies about the Holocaust so that people never forget about it."