In a mixture of Brechtian musical elements, special archive material and a surrealistic theatrical atmosphere, The Arm of Jesus tells the story of Hendrik Yzermans, a European miner who steals his colleague′s wages to pay for a ticket to America. Using found footage, the film transports the viewer to a lost life as it happened. Years later, Hendrik′s deserted son Jakob, travels to the United States to search for his missing father, but cannot find him. When Jakob has to leave Chicago for a business trip to Rotterdam, fate has a surprise in store for the younger man. A game with time across two contrasting lives, The Arm of Jesus plays with real and imagined life using archival film to illustrate the irretrievable history that we can recall, but cannot witness directly. Simultaneously, the film contrasts that irrevocable truth with our persistent attempt to alter the past through our actions in the present.