Claes Bang’s ‘I Is Another’ Shows How Stories of Deception Echo Today’s Tech‑Driven Media Automation

When the train to Oslo pulls out of the 1952 station, the cramped cabins become a pressure cooker for lies, half‑truths and the desperate search for redemption. Director‑writer Felix Randau stages that tension with a minimalist set, letting the audience feel the claustrophobia of a world still reeling from war while a charismatic physiotherapist claims to have saved Jewish prisoners from Himmler’s grip. The premise feels like a puzzle, but the film’s real intrigue lies in what that puzzle resembles in today’s media landscape.

Claes Bang inhabits Felix Kersten, the real‑life masseur whose wartime memoirs remain contested. Alongside Valerie Pachner’s sharp‑tongued East German journalist Hedda, the pair interrogates Kersten in a series of flashbacks that oscillate between the grim corridors of the SS and the intimate intimacy of a train cabin. The chemistry between Bang and Pachner fuels the narrative, while the supporting cast—especially Susanne Wuest as Kersten’s oddly buoyant wife Irmgard—adds texture to a story that constantly asks: Who decides what history remembers?

The film lands squarely in the “post‑truth” era, a phrase that has migrated from political commentary to newsroom boardrooms. In a world where algorithms curate the headlines we see, the line between fact‑checking and narrative shaping blurs. Randau’s decision to let the audience hear Kersten’s own recorded testimony—replete with gaps and self‑justifications—mirrors the way modern platforms present edited snippets of longer events, often stripping context in the name of engagement.

That parallel is not accidental. Media organisations are increasingly turning to technology‑driven automation to manage the sheer volume of content they produce. AI‑powered fact‑checking tools, natural‑language processing pipelines, and automated workflow systems now sift through thousands of stories daily, flagging inconsistencies before they reach the public. The same way Hedda uses a reel‑to‑reel recorder to capture Kersten’s confession, today’s journalists deploy digital recorders that instantly transcribe, tag, and cross‑reference statements against massive databases.

Structurally, the film’s confined train setting acts as a visual metaphor for siloed data pipelines. Each cabin is a self‑contained node where information is exchanged, edited, and sometimes deliberately distorted before moving to the next carriage. In contemporary newsrooms, similar silos exist: content management systems, editorial dashboards, and distribution platforms each handle a fragment of the story, often without a clear view of the whole. Randau’s choice to keep the audience inside the cabins forces us to confront how compartmentalization can both protect and corrupt truth.

Real‑world implications are already evident. Streaming giant Apple TV+ leverages recommendation algorithms that decide which titles surface for a viewer, echoing the film’s theme of selective storytelling. Apple’s own newsroom has begun integrating AI‑assisted editing tools to streamline script revisions, reducing human bottlenecks but raising questions about editorial oversight. Meanwhile, the NFL’s automated replay system illustrates how high‑stakes environments rely on instant, algorithmic verification—mirroring the film’s tension between a single recorded interview and the broader, contested historical record.

‘I Is Another’ is more than a period drama; it is a cautionary study of how truth can be packaged, repackaged, and sold. By anchoring its narrative in a historical controversy, the film invites media professionals to reflect on the automation tools that now shape public discourse. The lesson is clear: technology can amplify both clarity and confusion, and the responsibility to navigate that duality rests with the storytellers who choose what to record, edit, and ultimately broadcast.