Claes Bang plays the man who kneaded the back of one of the Third Reich's chief architects. The Danish actor stars in I Is Another (Ich ist ein Anderer), a German-Austrian co-production premiering in the Official Selection of the 79th Locarno Film Festival. The film screens in DCP 2K, runs 93 minutes, and is directed by Felix Randau (Variety; Locarno Film Festival).

The story centres on Felix Kersten, born Eduard Alexander Felix Kersten in Tartu, Estonia, in 1898. He trained in physical therapy in Helsinki and later apprenticed in Berlin before becoming Heinrich Himmler's personal physical therapist before and during World War II (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Anu Museum). Kersten died in 1960, but not before claiming he had used his proximity to Himmler to save numerous lives. Many disputed those claims (Variety).

That tension between self-mythology and historical record gives the film its dramatic spine. Valerie Pachner plays an ambitious journalist determined to expose Kersten's lies, squaring off against a man whose wartime reputation rests on stories only he could verify (Variety).

Bang is well cast for morally ambiguous terrain. His breakout came as the pompous museum curator in Ruben Östlund's Palme d'Or winner The Square (2017). He later played John Paul in Sharon Horgan's Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters and portrayed a man serving as intermediary between the Nazi party and Coco Chanel in the Apple series The New Look, opposite Juliette Binoche (Variety). I Is Another marks a return to historical-Nazi-era material for the actor.

Randau, the writer-director, previously helmed Iceman (2017) and the 2016 film Eden (Locarno Film Festival). I Is Another is produced by Ostlicht Filmproduktion and Wega Filmproduktion, with international sales handled by Beta Cinema — the sales agent that first introduced the project to buyers at the American Film Market in late 2025 (Variety; Locarno Film Festival). That AFM appearance — the American Film Market, where sales agents pitch upcoming titles to international distributors — gave the project nearly a year of industry visibility before its festival berth.

Locarno, held each August on the shore of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, is one of Europe's oldest film festivals and a respected launchpad for auteur cinema. The 79th edition runs with I Is Another in its Official Selection (Deadline; Locarno Film Festival, Instagram).