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

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire tells the story of one of the most important moral voices of the twentieth century. Directed by Oren Rudavsky, the film offers a deeply personal look at Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, writer, and teacher—whose life was shaped by both unimaginable tragedy and an unshakable belief in humanity’s capacity for good.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Rudavsky discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release in NYC on September 5th and Los Angeles on October 3rd.

Oren Rudavsky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for exploring Jewish identity, history, and culture, often in collaboration with fellow documentarian Menachem Daum. His films blend personal narrative with historical inquiry, illuminating the intersection of faith, memory, and social conscience.

Soul on Fire moves from Wiesel’s childhood in the Romanian town of Sighet to his deportation at age sixteen to Auschwitz, where he would ultimately lose most of his family. Through a mixture of animated sequences, rare archival footage, and Wiesel’s own words, the film brings these early years into focus while tracing the beginnings of a lifelong struggle to put memory into language.

Alongside his story of survival, the film also follows Wiesel’s rise as an author and speaker whose message reached far beyond the Jewish community. Viewers hear from family members, friends, and scholars who illuminate both the man and his mission: to point out injustice, and not let the world look away.

Wiesel’s moral reach extended to many corners of the globe. He called attention to the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews. He condemned apartheid in South Africa. He spoke out for Bosnian Muslims under siege, the victims of genocide in Rwanda, the Kurds, the Sudanese, and Argentina’s “Disappeared.” His Nobel Prize acceptance speech also included the recognition of Palestinian suffering, a reflection of his lifelong effort to encourage dialogue and understanding, eschewing static classifications of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ for a more nuanced, constantly evolving understanding of what we owe to those around us.

What emerges is a portrait of a man who never stopped asking difficult questions. How can memory shape the future? What does it mean to bear witness? Where do we draw the line between silence and action?

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire does not present easy answers, but it does offer viewers an intimate encounter with Wiesel’s humanity and all that it encompasses: his faith, his doubts, and his determination to remind the world of its responsibility to those who suffer.

“Though Rudavsky eloquently includes archival footage and judiciously applies the now overused device of animated reenactments, it is that face, those eyes, that voice, and those words that make this such a stunning film.” – Peter Keough, Doc Talk

“[This] devastating, necessary documentary concerns being a witness to history and then disseminating the horrors that the world means to forget or maybe worse . . . distort and make light of.” – Brandon Judell, Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs

“[Wiesel] wanted to create a world of witnesses, and he did so by bringing the story of the tragedy of the Holocaust to millions.” –  Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post