Irish Film Institute -THE DECENT ONE

THE DECENT ONE

Director: VANESSA LAPA

94 minutes, Austria-Israel, 2014, Black and White, Subtitled, D-Cinema


This film was released on Friday 17th April 2015 and is no longer screening.

Towards the close of World War II, the Nazi Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful figures of the Third Reich, was in hiding while his wife and daughter were escaping to Italy. It appears that when American soldiers entered the family house in Gmund, they took a collection of documents, including personal letters, diaries and photos, which they neglected to hand over to the U.S. authorities. The documents were passed around for decades before they came to the attention of the Israeli documentary filmmaker Vanessa Lapa.

Combining readings from these often intimate documents with rarely seen film footage restored from German national archives, Lapa presents a tensely gripping and daringly provocative study of a committed family man who considered himself thoroughly noble and even heroic while he was responsible for some of the worst atrocities of World War II. (Notes by Michael Hayden.)

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