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2025 > In Dialogue: Jesse & Zachary Herrmann — From Seder Table To The Screen
In Dialogue: Jesse & Zachary Herrmann — From Seder Table To The Screen
By Sidney Nickerson
26 Mar 2025
The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition has always been a platform for fresh, compelling voices in screenwriting. Among those voices are Jesse and Zachary Herrmann, brothers whose short film script, Elijah The Prophet, was brought to life through the competition. A decade later, they reflect on the experience that started over wine at a Passover Seder and led them to see their words come to life on festival screens around the world.
Zach and Jesse Herrmann came up with the idea of Elijah the Prophet while staying together in New York for part of a summer. At the time, Zach was living in Brooklyn, navigating his early years in the film industry, while Jesse was interning at producer Ted Hope’s production company. Their winning script was the result of a spontaneous comedic riff during a family Passover Seder, where tradition, wine and absolute absurdity intertwined to form a hilarious idea they couldn’t ignore.
At the dinner table, the Herrmann brothers began developing the story; a modernization of the Prophet Elijah as a spirit driving around the world drinking every glass of wine offered to him by Jewish families, à la a drunken Santa Claus or a tipsy Tooth Fairy.
“I thought we were just riffing, doing a bit at the table. But then, while sober, Zach was like, ‘No, no, no, this is legit funny. We’re putting pen to paper.’”
Even though Jesse had never written anything before, he took the first pass at the script, only for Zach to point out, “This is really funny, but it’s not a screenplay yet.” Over the course of a summer full of sleeping bag surfing and living in cramped New York apartments, they refined the script, passing a laptop back and forth until it took shape.
“It was maybe a little bit of a case of arrested development in some respects, but that’s a story for another day.” Zach laughs.
Like many other Jewish households, Passover Seders have long been a central part of their upbringing. In many ways, Elijah the Prophet was an exaggerated reflection of their own experiences.
“Honestly, with the exception of Elijah himself actually showing up, the rest of it is pretty much ripped right out of our own personal history,” Jesse says. “We intentionally named a few of the characters after uncles and cousins who were central to the Passover tradition in our lives.”
The core idea stemmed from Jesse’s childhood memory of believing Elijah had truly visited– until the day he caught his uncle downing the ceremonial wine before the younger kids returned to the table. “That moment of realization, when the magic is ripped away from you, that was the seed of our story.”
Zach adds, “For Jewish kids, Elijah is kind of the closest thing we have to Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny. But instead of bearing gifts, he just downs a glass of sugary, sweet Manischewitz that no one in their right mind would want to drink and just leaves. That delta between the Santa Claus experience and the Elijah experience is hilarious to us.”
After shaping the screenplay into a draft they were happy with, they submitted it around to various outlets to showcase their highly inspired script. One outlet was the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition. When they notified Zach of some news about their screenplay’s placement, Zach promptly ignored them for weeks. He finally opened it, and told Jesse,
“Hey, I’ve been ignoring this email for weeks because I thought it was a scam. Turns out, we won.”
Winning the CSSC was quickly followed by their script actually being produced; a surreal experience for both brothers. Jesse distinctly remembers standing on set, watching the flurry of activity around him, when Zach put an arm around his shoulder and said, “Hey, we did this.”
“That was the first time it really hit me,” Jesse reflects. “We wrote some words on a page, and now all these people are here bringing it to life.”
The film was directed by Ashley Cooper, a longtime friend of Zach’s going back toward the end of their college days, who brought an essential outside perspective to the project.
“We met while interning at the Cannes Film Festival and started writing together. David Cormican was producing and knew Ashley as well and flagged her immediately as, ‘This is who should direct this’— A Canadian, someone we trusted and was importantly, not Jewish.”
Jesse chimes in, “To me, there’s always an element of, ‘Is this just funny to us as Jews?’ That’s a thing I still experience when I find out that my very not Jewish friends are massive Seinfeld fans. Similarly, living in Philly and watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feeling like it resonates deeper to me and watching with this eye of ‘Are other people getting this?’ What helped was being the only Jews on the crew and having everyone agree that the script was indeed funny.”
Elijah the Prophet remains an important moment in the lives of Jesse and Zach Herrmann, and one that they look back on with fondness and pride of accomplishment, but what they think truly brought it together was the music.
“Our composer, Old Sleeper, added this warm, sentimental undertone that softened some of the harshed edges of the script,” Zach says. “It helped maintain the balance— Elijah is chummy until he’s not, and the music reminded us that even in the chaos, there’s heart.”
To this day, Jesse still finds himself revisiting the film.
“Every now and then it comes up in conversation. Something about how I once wrote a movie that got made. Someone will ask to see it and then I search my email and find that old Vimeo link… The end of the opening scene into the opening title of him walking out the door smiling and then immediately that smash cut to him vomiting in a bush. I crack up every time. Art Hindle really nailed it.”
Both Jesse and Zach have taken different career paths since their CSSC win. Jesse works in government service design, applying storytelling to advocate for policy changes, while Zach built a career in the documentary world. But their creative partnership isn’t over. The brothers are currently developing an animated satire about Washington politics and exploring claymation as a potential medium for delivery. “It’s the most abstract take on political absurdity we could think of,” Jesse teases.
“The best advice I ever received that can be applied to developing for non-fiction, film and television, is to imagine the story you want to tell, and then go out and find it in real life,” Zach reveals. “It’ll never be a clear one-to-one, of course. The hope is always that the thing that you find in real life is even better than what you would kind of first set out for, but it is still a creative pursuit, and one that feels like home.”
Jesse adds, “I like that idea of storytelling. I think that’s probably a better way to frame how I do my job— is that we often try to take these really complex services (that governments design), and uncover the main character in it. The person who needs this critical social benefit and tell that story to the government, the legislators— whoever needs to hear it so that they understand that person’s Hero’s Journey and why it’s so hard for them to get the benefits they need. So there’s always this crafting of a story to the sharing of our research. It’s human-centered.”
Zach wholeheartedly agrees, “We respond to characters and narrative. We are hardwired to that. So it’s sort of the best delivery device for getting any kind of point across. I don’t know what point we were trying to make with Elijah the Prophet… But it was fun.”
For those considering entering the CSSC, take Zach’s experience with a cube of sugar:
“It was such a great and surreal experience, going to the Yorkton Film Festival up in Saskatchewan; It was just such a whirlwind. It was a huge confidence boost. I was working on a commercial desk at a talent agency, which was my first job in ‘the industry’, but it was so far from anything I was dreaming of. And this was the first time that I think anyone externally, apart from Ashley Cooper, really confirmed to me ‘Oh, yeah, you can do this…’ I can draw a straight line from Elijah the Prophet (being produced), to being in Romania on a $30 million mini-series that I wrote for History Channel. There’s no question that that doesn’t happen without the CSSC. So, I do owe a debt of gratitude. And it just kind of reinforces the idea that you just got to go out and make stuff, you know? There’s no waiting around, you just have to go out and write it and then find a way to do it.”
Jesse adds, “For me it was just amazing to be part of Zach’s crazy world, even for a brief and glorious moment.”
At its heart, Elijah the Prophet is a story about discovery— the wonder of childhood belief and the bittersweet moments when illusions are shattered. But beyond the laughs, the film speaks to something deeper; the universal process of making sense of the absurdity of our traditions, families and our everyday lives.
Whether they’re crafting policy narratives for the good of all citizens or going out uncovering riveting documentary stories, the Herrmann brothers continue to find meaning in life’s everyday details. Their journey is proof that great stories don’t need grand beginnings— sometimes, they start at the family dinner table, with a joke and a few glasses of wine.
Written by Sidney Nickerson
Brand Ambassador
