Few figures in film history provoke as much discomfort or debate as Leni Riefenstahl. A pioneering director often celebrated for her technical innovation- also remembered for the propaganda she made in the service of The Third Reich. In Riefenstahl, director Andreas Veiel does not attempt to re-open this debate or deliver a blunt verdict. Instead, he offers something far more compelling and difficult: an invitation to witness the elaborate myth Riefenstahl built around herself, told entirely in her own voice and images.
With unprecedented access to her personal archive of over 700 boxes of private recordings, letters, photographs and home videos, Veiel allows Riefenstahl to speak across time. The result is a quiet, disturbing documentary that undermines decades of self-defence and carefully constructed denials. Producer Sandra Maischberger secured access to the archive after the death of Riefenstahl’s partner Horst Kettner in 2016. What emerges from the material is not just a portrait of an artist, but of a woman obsessed with controlling how history would remember her.
The documentary opens not with her infamous propaganda work, but with scenes from The Blue Light, Riefenstahl’s 1932 debut as both director and star. Set in the mountains she idolised, the film depicts her as a mystical outsider, misunderstood and hauntingly beautiful. It is a telling starting point. By foregrounding this early, romanticised self-image, the documentary introduces a recurring theme: Riefenstahl’s lifelong desire to be remembered as an artist, not a propagandist. She returned to The Blue Light again and again throughout her life, seeing it as proof of her innocence and creative purity. Veiel uses this to set the stage for a film not just about history, but about legacy, denial and the curated myths people tell about themselves.
From there, the documentary shifts into more politically charged territory. Using newly uncovered materials from Riefenstahl’s estate, it draws a timeline through her career, her associations with the Nazi regime, and her post-war attempts to rehabilitate her image. Much of the documentary is constructed from her own voice – snippets of phone calls, interviews and recordings where she insists that she was never politically involved and knew nothing of the horrors being committed by the state that supported her work. But these claims are contrasted with footage and documentation that quietly undermine them. Whether directing footage of Hitler’s rallies or visiting occupied Poland under Nazi military escort, the evidence builds not to a confrontation, but a slow, persistent erosion of her claims of innocence.
The documentary also explores her later photographic work with the Nuba people in Sudan, a chapter of her life she tried to present as redemption. But even here, Veiel gently interrogates her role. There are strong echoes of colonial gaze and performance with her images staged, composed and controlled to be offered up for Western consumption. These sequences are contrasted with recordings of Riefenstahl being interviewed much later in her life discussing lighting, framing, and her own appearance. It becomes clear that presenting and preserving a certain self-image was paramount.
Underlying all of this is the question: can you separate an artist from their politics? Riefenstahl certainly tried. The documentary returns to her purist image in The Blue Light near the end, perhaps as a gesture of understanding what she wished would remain of her legacy. But history is not so easily rewritten. The symmetry and choreography that made her films so admired were not apolitical. They reflected and amplified the spectacle of authoritarianism. There is no denying her technical brilliance. Even Quentin Tarantino once called her the greatest director who ever lived. But Veiel refuses to let that brilliance obscure the truth. Instead, he focuses on what she tried to hide. Art may be open to interpretation, but biography, when viewed through the evidence, leaves less room for ambiguity.
Riefenstahl once said, “For something to be remembered, other things must be forgotten.” Veiel, with quiet clarity, refuses to forget. His documentary restores what she tried to erase, revealing that the most dangerous lies are often the ones told beautifully.
Featured Image: Contact sheet from the holdings of Heinrich Hoffmann, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Bildarchiv: Leni Riefenstahl welcomes Adolf Hitler in her villa in Berlin-Dahlem (1937) _© Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Bildarchiv
Review by Olivia Kiakides
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFuSIsFsfgE
Riefenstahl — Dogwoof Releasing
DOGWOOF/BETA CINEMA
presents a production of VINCENT PRODUCTIONS GMBH in coproduction with WDR, NDR, BR, SWR and RBB in collaboration with RAI CINEMA
A documentary written and directed by Andres Veiel/Produced by Sandra Maischberger/ supported by FFA, BKM, mbb, Filmstiftung NRW and DFFF
Cert 15 / Running Time: 115 Minutes
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