Riefenstahl - English subtitled
For this definitive documentary on Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), Andres Veiel was given access to her private archive. Veiel shows that Riefenstahl’s ties to Hitler and Goebbels were much closer than she was later willing to admit.
Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) is one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century. Famous for her Nazi propaganda films Triumph Des Willens (1935) and Olympia (1936), she is seen as a visionary filmmaker, but also as a woman who put herself in the service of a disastrous ideology. Riefenstahl herself saw things differently. She had merely seized an opportunity to use her talents. But how could Riefenstahl become the most prominent filmmaker of the Third Reich and continue to claim she knew nothing about war crimes?
Riefenstahl is a penetrating and layered portrait of the woman behind the filmmaker. Thanks to exclusive access to her personal archive – containing some 700 boxes full of photos, letters and personal films – director Andres Veiel was given the opportunity to study Riefenstahl’s involvement with Nazism in depth. Besides the complexity of Riefenstahl as a person, Veiel’s documentary explores the ethical limits of cinema and invites the audience to reflect on art and politics.