‘Nathan-ism’ Review: Scrappy Art Doc Asks Whether Memories Can Take on a Life of Their Own

variety.com:

Alissa Simon Film Critic Offering an unusual take on the Holocaust, “Nathan-ism” is a low-budget portrait of garrulous, elderly New York outsider artist Nathan Hilu, a proud but impoverished Jewish veteran who compulsively, maniacally documents his WWII military experience in naïve drawings with a black Sharpie and colored crayons.

Unfortunately, his self-proclaimed autobiographical art does not always match up with his lived history. After a festival run in 2023, this not particularly satisfying documentary from debuting director Elan Golod is receiving a limited theatrical release through Outsider Pictures and Chapter Two Films.

Hilu, the son of Syrian-Jewish immigrants, joined the U.S. army at 18. An assignment to guard high-ranking Nazi prisoners — including Hermann Göring, Julius Streicher and Albert Speer — during the Nuremberg trials apparently made such a profound impact on him that he spends the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative about that time.

But as Golod starts to research Hilu’s assertions, it seems that the artist’s memories could be colored by more than his markers.