A film about Heinrich Himmler world-premieres on August 7 at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, and the hardest part of getting it made was finding someone willing to play the SS chief. Writer-director Felix Randau told The Hollywood Reporter that casting Himmler was the production's toughest challenge, and that some actors turned the part down outright, accusing him of giving "a stage for an evil guy like Himmler" (The Hollywood Reporter, 7 August 2026).

The role ultimately went to Martin Müller, cast by Randau and casting director Suse Marquardt. Randau described Müller as best known for stage and television work — a profile that will shift sharply with a Piazza Grande premiere at one of Europe's major festivals (The Hollywood Reporter, 7 August 2026).

"I Is Another" (Ich Ist ein Anderer) is a 93-minute German-Austrian production set in 1952, seven years after the war's end. Claes Bang plays Felix Kersten, a massage therapist who once treated Himmler and now finds himself ambushed by a journalist named Hedda, played by Valerie Pachner, pressing him to revisit his past. The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as a psychological thriller about truth, ego and the hunger for validation (The Hollywood Reporter, 6 August 2026).

Randau linked the project to the present political moment in Germany, citing the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which placed second in the country's 2025 federal election and built strongholds in the eastern states of the former GDR (The Hollywood Reporter, 7 August 2026).

Himmler is one of those historical figures actors approach with extreme caution, and the screen history is short. Ulrich Noethen played him in both "Downfall" (2004) and "My Führer." Matthias Freihof took the part opposite Tom Cruise in "Valkyrie" (2008). Eddie Marsan played him in "The Exception" (2016). Stephen Graham played him in "The Man With the Iron Heart" (2017). Kenneth Tigar portrayed him across the alternate-history series "The Man in the High Castle" (2016–2019) (The Hollywood Reporter, 7 August 2026).

On the business side, Beta Cinema boarded international sales for the film and added it to its slate at the American Film Market — the AFM, the annual Santa Monica trade event where sales agents pitch finished films and projects to international distributors — back in October 2025, unveiling a first still of Bang as Kersten (Deadline, 16 October 2025; Beta Cinema). Cineuropa reported Beta's description of the story as exploring "the blurred lines between truth and self-mythologising" (Cineuropa, 20 October 2025).

What makes the casting friction notable is that it rarely surfaces so openly. Actors decline roles for scheduling, money or fit all the time; few say so on the record, and fewer still name the moral objection. That Randau heard it repeatedly enough to cite it tells you something about where the line still sits for performers weighing historical villainy — even when the villain never appears as the film's centre, but as a memory interrogated from a distance.