Overview
- The film I Is Another premiered Friday at the Locarno Film Festival’s Piazza Grande and centers on an imagined confrontation between Felix Kersten and an investigative journalist.
- Randau’s five years of archival work, which he says uncovered documents including an SS membership card, prompted him to abandon a straight celebratory telling and reshape the project as a skeptical inquiry.
- Claes Bang plays Kersten and Valerie Pachner plays the journalist, with critics praising Bang’s layered portrayal of a man who may have helped some people but also sought validation and exaggerated his role.
- I Is Another is a European co-production produced by Ostlicht and Wega, sold by Beta Cinema, and backed by broadcasters MDR, arte and BR, positioning it for the festival circuit and international sales.
- The film restates a long-running historiographical debate by revisiting Kersten’s postwar claims of rescuing thousands, showing how documents and narrative choices can change public memory and raise ethical questions about humanizing Nazi-era figures.