Riefenstahl
A gripping portrait of controversial filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl (The Triumph of the Will), who despite all evidence to the contrary still maintained she was not complicit in the atrocities carried out by the Third Reich.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2025
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
Thursday, May 22, 2025
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
How do you solve a problem like Leni Riefenstahl? No one had ever filmed crowds and political speeches with such technical innovation and emotional power as Riefenstahl did in Triumph of the Will (1935); her Olympia (1938) depicted the physical achievement of peak athletics with unprecedented aesthetic verve. Why not celebrate this pioneering female filmmaker who took on her producers and got exactly what she wanted out of her shoots? The reason is that her producers were Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. Though she claimed to the end of her long life that she was an artist only concerned with making art, and that she had no idea of the Nazi state’s atrocities, these works in fact originated in the heart of the Nazi establishment. Andreas Veiel’s film makes us know Leni, with her elegance, her huge hands and the curious, joker-like curl of her smile, while asking: What did she know, and when did she know it? Why did she do what she did? Making shrewd use of archival footage and Veiel’s own research, Riefenstahl shows Leni behind the editing console and the camera, at play, and in interviews. In doing so, Veiel conveys a thoughtful, nuanced, and gripping portrait of the artist and her work, while asking, calmly but insistently, just how far we can untangle the two.
- Director: Andres Veiel
- Principal Cast: Ulrich Noethen, Leni Riefenstahl
- Country: Germany
- Year: 2024
- Running Time: 116 min.
- Producer: Sandra Maischberger
- Screenplay: Andres Veiel
- Cinematographers: Toby Cornish
- Editors: Alfredo Castro, Stephan Krumbiegel
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: Beyus (2017), If Not Us, Who? (2011), Black Box BRD (2001)
- Language: German, English
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- Format: DCP
- US Distributor: Kino Lorber
- International Sales: Beta Cinema