Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl (2024) offers a penetrating exploration of one of cinema’s most controversial figures: Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker whose aesthetic brilliance was inseparable from her work for the Nazi regime. Veiel’s film, which screened in Germany last year and will be opening at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center on 09/12, combines archival footage, interviews, and Riefenstahl’s own recordings to trace her extraordinary career—from her early days as a dancer and actress to her eventual status as Hitler’s personal filmmaker and beyond.
Riefenstahl’s life’s story is inescapably complex. As a young director in the early 1930s, she created alpine adventure films before collaborating closely with Adolf Hitler on propaganda masterpieces such as Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), documenting mass rallies and the 1936 Berlin Olympics with unprecedented technical innovation. Yet her acclaim was always shadowed by the moral compromises implicit in her work, a reality that Veiel confronts head-on.
The documentary draws on an extraordinary archive left behind by Riefenstahl herself, including correspondence, taped answering machine messages, and photographs from her post-war life. These materials illuminate not only her enduring claims to aesthetic purity, but also the moments when she could (or perhaps would) not acknowledge the atrocities occurring off-camera. While the evidence is often circumstantial, the film succeeds at examining the troubling intersection between her genius and the ideology her art served.
Veiel’s documentary does not shy away from the discomfort of its subject. What emerges is a portrait of a singularly gifted yet morally ambivalent artist, one whose aesthetic vision was inseparable from an ideology that caused unimaginable suffering. By examining both her celebrated technical innovations and her troubling ethical legacy, Riefenstahl challenges audiences to reckon with the complicated relationship between art and politics, genius and responsibility.
The film is as much about Riefenstahl herself as it is about the broader cultural and historical context of Germany in the twentieth century. Through meticulous research and a wealth of archival materials, Veiel presents a story that is as compelling as it is disturbing, offering viewers an unflinching look at the artist behind some of history’s most infamous films and the legacy she left behind.
“[The film is] a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“[A] welcome addition to the historically grounded rebukes to Riefenstahl and her apologists.” –Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“Riefenstahl does not come to praise or reclaim the late director, but nor does it mean to bury her.” – Xan Brooks, The Guardian