David Evans' documentary is the most affecting I have seen in the festival previews to date. It is devastating in its simplicity of concept and relentlessness of investigation. The narrator and key protagonist is Phillipe Sands, a famous human rights lawyer based in the UK who, in turns out, had family killed in the Holocaust and a grandfather who survived but was understandably reluctant to speak about his experiences. The power of the documentary is that is chronicles Sand's encounter with two sons of high ranking Nazi officials. The first, Niklas Frank, whose father Hans ran the General Government in Poland, has fully embraced his father's past to the point where he is almost obsessed with how much he despises him. The second, Horst von Waechter, whose father was the Governor of Krakow and Galicia, steadfastly refuses to accept any evidence that his father had command responsibility for the mass murder of Jews, and welcomes anyone who will speak of him as a decent man, even if that man is wearing a swastika.
