A bold, revealing portrait of the pioneering cartoonist Art Spiegelman, whose singular graphic-novel masterpiece Maus, depicting his parents’ Holocaust survival, forever changed what comics can do. Through archival footage, interviews, and a fearless exploration of trauma, identity, and expression, the documentary tracks Spiegelman’s evolution from underground comix contributor to cultural innovator, exploring how he turned personal and collective catastrophe into art. With sharp insight and crisp storytelling, the film charts how his medium became a vehicle for memory, revolt, and intellectual daring — and how Spiegelman himself became a voice for free speech in a time of rising censorship.

In its world premiere at the DOC NYC in November 2024, the film won the Grand Jury Prize — a signal honour marking it as a standout among documentary offerings. It also enjoys the legacy of its subject’s own Pulitzer Prize win for Maus, the first graphic novel to receive that accolade in 1992.

More than just a biography, this documentary invites viewers to contemplate the relationship between art and apocalypse, humor and horror, survival and invention. It challenges us to consider how the image-making of the personal can speak to the political — and how in Spiegelman’s hands, the mouse-and-cat metaphor became a searing, unforgettable record of history and consciousness.