Welcome to Marwen is based on the life and art of Mark Hogancamp, a hate-crime sufferer who used art as therapy.
To cope with the aftermath of an incident that left him with profound psychological trauma in 2000, he developed Marwencol, a fictional 1:6 model World War II hamlet populated with dolls motivated by his real-life friends, neighbors, and even the attackers.
Jeff Malmberg's award-winning documentary called after the fictional town featured him in 2010.
Because he couldn't afford therapy (because Medicaid stopped paying for it), Hogancamp devised his own extravagant version: constructing an extensive fantasy world in his backyard using dolls.
In Marwencol, director Jeff Malmberg puts Hogancamp front and center, enabling him to narrate his own story and divulge some of the more private parts of his life at his own pace.
Given its subject matter, Marwencol had the potential to be exploitative. But Malmberg holds back, allowing the character of Hogancamp to drive the film rather than any contrivance or "story," and it succeeds.