We are all prisoners of memory, for better or worse.

In Fugitive Pieces, adapted from Anne Michaels’ eponymous novel, Jakob Beer, the main protagonist, is inextricably enmeshed in the past, which to him remains a source of unspeakable pain and anguish.

Stephen Dillane and Ayelet Zurer in Fugitive Pieces

As portrayed in Jeremy Podeswa’s contemplative and shattering movie – which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and starts in local theatres on May 2 – Jakob is burdened and immobilized by the Holocaust, the  defining event of his life.

Torn by guilt as a survivor, and unable to jettison the horrific images that haunt and torment him, Jakob is a victim. The fragility and complexity of Jakob’s emotional state, burned into his consciousness by the cold-blooded murder of his parents and the abduction and disappearance of his sister in Poland in 1942, is ably transferred to the screen by Podeswa, the screenwriter and director.

His task is to preserve Michaels’ poetic sensibility and connect interlocking themes of loss and love, and in this respect, he succeeds admirably.

Moving seamlessly in flashbacks between war-torn Poland, the idyllic Greek islands and Toronto of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Fugitive Pieces opens in kinetic fashion as nine-year-old Jakob witnesses an act of untrammelled Nazi brutality. Running into the forest after his parents are killed and his sister is dragged away by anonymous thugs, Jakob (Robbie Kay) finds shelter in a clearing, covering himself with leaves.

Athos Roussos (Rade Sherbedgia), a compassionate Greek archeologist working on an excavation, stumbles upon the frightened Jewish boy and resolves to save him from the tender mercies of the Nazis. Smuggling him out of Poland, he takes him to his home on the island of Zakynthos, which is also occupied by  Germany. There, in fear of the Germans, Jakob keeps a low profile.

At this point, the film fast forwards to Toronto, where Jakob (Stephen Dillane), now a writer, falls in love with the beautiful, outgoing Alex (Rosamund Pike), his polar opposite temperamentally.They marry, but it is an uneasy relationship. Alex, a social butterfly, lives for the moment. Jakob, a loner who savours solitude, wallows in his fleeting Holocaust experience. She is insensitive to his deep-seated feelings, while he cannot tolerate her “shameless vitality.”

It is a prescription for marital breakdown.

These scenes, directed with panache, establish Jakob’s inability to shake off his obsession with the murder of his parents and the disappearance of his sister, a promising pianist.

Returning to Greece, Podeswa fleshes out Jakob’s growing dependence on Athos, a generous, open-hearted person who is also tormented by demons.

Wracked by nightmares, Jakob sleeps fitfully. As the Nazi reign of terror unfolds on Athos’ bucolic island, he shelters a young couple and their infant child whom the Germans want to arrest and deport. The wife is Christian and the husband is Jewish.

Greece’s liberation from the yoke of Nazi tyranny is heralded by a scene in which a convoy of trucks with fighters and fluttering Greek flags rolls by. With the war having ended, Athos accepts a university teaching position in Canada, and Jakob accompanies him to Toronto.

Maturing into a poised, intelligent young man, Jakob is a solitary though not asocial individual. He forms lasting friendships with neighbours and fellow survivors with whom he can converse in Latvian-inflected Yiddish. And while he dreams of his lost, beloved sister, he longs for the day when his bitter memories of her will no longer distract him.

In terms of emotional resonance, Fugitive Pieces, whose ending has been altered since its world premiere last summer, gathers power in heart-felt scenes during which Jakob romances the new woman in his life, the museum curator Michaela, played sensitively by Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer.

For Jakob, Michaela is a miracle. Unlike Alex, she completely understands and empathizes with his obsessions, and  can probably give him a normal and  perhaps blissful future.

Relentlessly sombre in tone and substance, Fugitive Pieces, produced by Robert Lantos, is a showcase for the talents of a fine cast.

Kay is preternaturally mature, and Dillane, brooding and intellectual, is a steady and reliable presence. Zurer bonds with him in a few brief and affecting scenes. Pike is convincing, while    Sherbedgia, shaggy and warm, may remind a viewer of Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek.

The horror of the Holocaust often eludes comprehension, but in Fugitive Pieces, Podeswa leaves viewers with an  understanding that unbridled terror and  a yearning for normality are not necessarily opposing forces.