It’s 1975 and Alistair Little is a cocky teenager living in a Lurgan housing estate, with pictures of Bruce Lee and George Best on his wall, an oversupply of testosterone and a burning desire to be a man about town. He joins the UVF, and asks to be allowed kill a Catholic. The man he murders is Joe Griffin’s brother, and 11-year-old Joe is witness to the killing. Thirty three years later, a repentant Little and revenge-hungry Griffin are invited to meet by a television company eager to film the encounter. Both men need this meeting for different reasons, this five minutes of heaven where confronting the past will either put their demons to rest or unleash new ones. It is a masterful, modern and complex look at how post-conflict truth-searching plays over a human heart. Though there are occasional slips into caricature (the television producers are particularly inane), and moments of over-scripted dialogue, the two central performances, with Liam Neeson as the Protestant Little and James Nesbitt as the Catholic Griffin in a canny juxtaposition of their real-life origins, are powerful and nuanced. Nesbitt in particular shines in a role that allows him scope to reveal all of the complexity of being human and male in a world of us against them.

Five Minutes of Heaven masterfully plays with the preconceptions built instantly by its audience: Little at first appears commanding and successful as he smooth-talks about South Africa and Kosovo to his chauffeur on the way to the meeting place, while Griffin is nervous and self-effacing, discomfited by his place in the back seat. Later, the emptiness of Little’s Spartan Belfast flat provides a different picture, markedly contrasting with Griffins’ bustling family home.

Oliver Hirschbiegel, who directed Downfall, treats his subject with the kind of care and intelligence it deserves, avoiding the touchy-feely wooliness of his film’s fictional television crew. There are light moments against the dark backdrop, but ultimately Hirschbiegel avoids the easy, satisfying wrap of a Hollywood ending. The result is less of an ending than a page turning, allowing room enough for hope and the possibility of a future that can leave its past behind.