Riefenstahl

German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has always been a divisive and ambiguous figure. Although she has been lauded as a filmmaker of note whose technical prowess and grasp of the medium pointed to a singular talent, it was these same abilities that caught Hitler’s eye. At his behest, she made the documentaries Olympia (1938), about the 1936 Olympic Games, and, most notoriously, Triumph Of The Will, a chronicle of the 1934 Nazi Party Conference in Nuremberg. Regardless of her talent, these were out-and-out Nazi propaganda films, and Riefenstahl spent the remainder of her life until her death in 2003 tainted by association, despite her repeated pleas of ignorance and innocence. Andres Veiel’s extraordinary and extraordinarily clear-eyed documentary acknowledges all sides of Riefenstahl’s life and talent, bolstered by unfettered access to her personal archives, and allows audiences to draw their own conclusions.