At the end of World War II, Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York, received a life-changing assignment from the U.S. Army: to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic inspiration for Nathan, a virtually unknown ‘outsider artist’, who spent the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories. But what happens when those memories take on a life of their own?

Filmmaker Elan Golod presents a documentary portrait of the ageing artist, but what begins as a peek at a unique witness to history grows into an absorbing study of the function of art as archive and invention. Daring to question an artist’s stories, Nathan-ism is a fascinating look at one man’s need to share truths with a world that doesn’t always want to listen.