At the end of World War II, Nathan Hilu, an 18-year-old Jewish U.S. Army private from New York, was assigned to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. For one year, Hilu kept suicide watch over Hermann Göring and Albert Speer and learned first-hand about the men and their crimes. Speer himself instructed Hilu to "…keep your eyes open and write what you see here..."
With brutish lines and annotated pastel sketches, Hilu obsessively documented those memories for the next 70 years. Now in his 90s, Hilu still compulsively animates the very same stories.
Filmmaker Elan Golod proposes a documentary portrait of the aging 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.