Riefenstahl

Germany | 2024 | 115 min.
Director: Andres Veiel
Documentary film

When a state foundation was donated the entire estate of Leni Riefenstahlin 2018, it was already considered one of the most significant collections in the history of film and photography. Andres Veiel’s documentary is now uncovering this treasure of 700 boxes of film, manuscripts, letters, files, documents and voice recordings.

Starting with Leni Riefenstahl‘s beginnings as a celebrated actress in the 1930s, the film delineates how her initial encounters with Hitler and Goebbels propelled her to become the Reich’s preeminent filmmaker. Her propaganda film Triumph des Willens ("Triumph of the Will") about the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg and Olympia, about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin are world-famous works, deriving from her close, multi-year collaboration with the party’s leaders. Hitherto unseen private films, personal photos and intimate documents combined with Video recordings of Riefenstahl‘s memorable appearances on German and international TV-shows from the 1960s until her death in 2003 show an artist endeavoring to disassociate the striking aesthetics she crafted from the ideology of the Nazis. Andres Veiel lets us investigate ourselves her lies, incantations and slander, elevating the discourse to a universal and timeless inquiry of self-portrayal and external perception within the media.