Directed by Andres Veiel
Certificate 15
115 minutes
Released 9 May

There is something deeply depressing about the fact that one of the most talented female film directors who ever lived is also without a doubt also one of the most troubling. Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) is best known today for the documentaries Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), the first a record of the Nazi Party’s Nuremberg Rally, the second of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Both eulogise large scale spectacle, with Olympia in particular celebrating the human body as it undergoes the rigour of sports disciplines. Both celebrate victory, superiority, dominance.

Riefenstahl lived to the ripe old age of 101, claiming over the years that she was an artist who happened to fall in with the Third Reich by dint of birthplace and time; she didn’t really understand what that regime was doing and simply got on with making the films that she made under their patronage.

There have been documentaries about her before, yet what makes this one different is that following the death of her partner Horst Kettner in 2016, Riefenstahl’s personal archive, some 700 boxes, was transferred to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. The producer and former journalist Sandra Maischberger was given access to the archive.

Maischberger had conducted the last interview with Riefenstahl before her death, and was left with the impression of a performer promoting an image of herself she had come to believe. Maischberger became obsessed with the idea that the 700 boxes might tell a very different story, and reveal the real artist and her complicity with the Nazis.

The director Andres Veiel, who previously made the artist documentary Beuys (2017), here confirms his reputation for intensive research and effectively marshalling teams of editors to get to grips with personal archives and those who put them together.

‘Fake news’ is prevalent today and we need to identify it and point it out, as and when it frequently occurs. Fascism is on the rise in various territories worldwide. Leni Riefenstahl can be seen as an early practitioner and manipulator of such ideas. This challenging documentary is a helpful guide, its lessons from the last century providing tools to deal with equally troublesome, present day figures on the far right and the damaging myths that they peddle.

Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. His website is jeremycprocessing.com

___

This is an extract from an article published in the Issue 3 – 2025 edition of Reform

Subscribe to Reform