An extraordinary film of truth and reconciliation from director Daniela Volker that was highly deserving of this year's Yad Vashem Award for outstanding Holocaust-related documentary

The Commandant's Shadow is a remarkable documentary that brings together the son and grandson of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, with survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and her daughter Maya. Jonathan Glazer’s film The Zone of Interest presented a fictionalised version of daily life in a simulacrum of the Nazi’s family home. This documentary from director Daniela Volker steps inside the original house, with Höss’s son Hans Jürgen and grandson Kai.

It's a gripping and fascinating feature-length film, with a riveting cast, strong narrative, stunning photography and touches of humour. The Commandant's Shadow provides facts and archive footage, addressing questions that Glazer’s movie raised but left unanswered. As well as fulfilling the Reithian Principle ('to inform, educate and entertain') Volker's documentary is scrupulously edited and presents the after-effects of the dark shadow cast by Höss, who killed more than a million people, most of them Jews.

The cinematography, by Rob Goldie and Petr Trela, is superb, with sympathetic camerawork in the interior settings and dramatic outdoor shots taken from high above by drone. The film opens and closes with an expansive, full-screen view of the Judaean Hills, where Höss was stationed in 1917.

When Volker first met Höss’s son, he was in his 80s and in denial. Hans remembered only an idyllic childhood with an affectionate father who happened to be in charge of a ‘prison’ next door. He had silenced all reference to the death camp and still carried a loving letter from his murderous father. Shortly before his execution, while in jail, Höss wrote a confessional memoir. The manuscript’s grisly contents finally convinced Hans of his father’s crimes. His dawning recognition is captured on film; Volker enabled him to open up for the first time.

Hans' elder sister Puppi moved to America, remaining a Holocaust sceptic and a staunch defender of her father. Separated for many years, the film brings brother and sister together and they immediately revert to infantile role playing. A once beautiful fashion model, the now shrivelled Puppi praises her father. "He must have been strong to do what he did," she says. She died soon after the interview.

Grandson Kai only found out about his grandfather while studying history in school. He squares up to the truth and illuminates the darkness with the light of God. Now a pastor in southern Germany, preaching to American servicemen, he wrestles with the biblical warning that a father’s iniquities are visited on the third and fourth generations. His own children are brought up with the truth and, appositely, one is even learning the cello.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, an accomplished cellist, escaped the gas chamber by playing in the camp orchestra. She and her daughter Maya chain-smoke throughout the film; Anita seems to thrive on 40 a day, celebrating her 99th birthday this July. Pragmatically moving on from the past, she has a tetchy relationship with Maya, whose emotional life has been scarred by the Holocaust. The film follows Maya’s healing process as she bravely relocates to Germany and creates a memorial in a woodland near the town where her murdered grandparents once lived.

Anita agrees to invite Hans and Kai to her London home. They shake hands, drink coffee and eat a traditional German fruit tart. "You weren't asked whose son you want to be," she says to Hans. Later, she sums up the significance of their meeting. "This is going to the next stage. Not what we’ve done, but what are we doing now. That is important."

By Irene Wise

The Commandant's Shadow is out now in select cinemas. warnerbros.co.uk/movies/commandants-shadow