I Is Another: A Filmic Probe of Felix Kersten’s Contested Legacy

Set on a night train traveling from Stockholm to Oslo in 1952, *I Is Another* stages a tense encounter between Felix Kersten (Claes Bang), the Baltic-German physiotherapist who served SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, and Hedda Wohmann (Valerie Pachner), a fictional East-German journalist. Kersten, traveling with his wife Irmgard, hopes the trip will culminate in the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, while Hedda seeks to expose what she believes are fabrications in Kersten’s memoirs. Their dialogue, intercut with flashbacks to wartime meetings with Himmler, drives the film’s exploration of memory, self-promotion, and the malleability of historical truth.

Variety Magazine

Felix Kersten (1898–1960) was a real-life massage therapist who treated Himmler’s chronic stomach pain. After the war he published memoirs claiming that his influence persuaded Himmler to halt a planned deportation of Dutch citizens and to secure the release of tens of thousands of concentration-camp prisoners. In the 1950s he received the Netherlands’ Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize eight times.

Deadline Hollywood

Writer-director Felix Randau began researching Kersten after a five-year-old pitch from French producers for a television series. His own archival work uncovered a SS membership card and other documents that led him to doubt Kersten’s self-portrait.

Variety Magazine

The film’s visual design confines most action to cramped train cabins, using mirrors and flashbacks to underscore the theme that “every person contains multitudes.”

Variety Magazine

• Number of Lives Saved: Deadline reports Kersten claimed to have saved “some 60,000 Jewish people,” whereas Variety notes his own statements refer only to “thousands” of prisoners.

Deadline Hollywood

• Nobel Nominations: Both sources agree Kersten was nominated eight times in the 1950s, but the exact years and outcomes remain unspecified.

Variety Magazine

• Historical Accuracy of the “White Buses” Narrative: The Hollywood Reporter explains that the film portrays Kersten publishing a letter that paints Folke Bernadotte in an unflattering light, a plot point that “is not strictly historically accurate.”

Hollywood Reporter

These discrepancies illustrate the limited archival consensus on Kersten’s wartime interventions and highlight the film’s reliance on speculative dramatization.

Deadline Hollywood

• Bang also noted that the character’s desire for validation “became his downfall.”

Variety Magazine

• “It’s horrible to take on that role on the one hand, but on the other hand, it’s an interesting person,” — Martin Müller, the German actor

Hollywood Reporter

The film’s premiere in Locarno’s Piazza Grande program in August 2026 positions *I Is Another* as a contemporary meditation on how personal ambition can reshape collective memory, inviting audiences to question the boundaries between historical fact and self-crafted legend.

Deadline Hollywood