History buffs, and especially the vast army of folk obsessed with the second world war and Nazis, will be enthralled by director Vanessa Lapa’s exhaustive documentary about Heinrich Himmler, who rose through the ranks of the party to become minister of the interior. As actors read German voiceover extracts from letters and documents from the man himself and his circle, smartly chosen archive footage provides illustration. Gradually, the story unfolds of how one repressed, meticulous child with recurrent tummy trouble grew up to become one of Hitler’s right-hand men and a major architect of the Holocaust. His rampant antisemitism, homophobia and fascist mind-set are horrifying, but in a way more disturbing are glimpses of ordinary humanity, even kindness (he was a fairly devoted if not always faithful family man), stifled in his devotion to the Third Reich. The decision to add in sound effects to zhoosh up the imagery may irk some purists, but Lapa also knows when silence is most effective.