RIEFENSTAHL / РІФЕНШТАЛЬ

Leonid Nefedovich
Sep 26
2 min read

2024 / 115' / documentary / Germany

Leni Riefenstahl is considered one of the most controversial women of the 20th century as an artist and a Nazi propagandist. Her films Triumph Of The Will and Olympia stand for perfectly staged body worship and the celebration of the superior and victorious. At the same time, these images project contempt for the imperfect and weak. Riefenstahl’s aesthetics are more present than ever today – but is that also true for their implied message? The film examines this question using documents from Riefenstahl's estate, including private films, photos, recordings, and letters. It uncovers fragments of her biography and places them in an extended historical context. How could Riefenstahl become the Reich's preeminent filmmaker and keep denying any closer ties to Hitler and Goebbels? During her long life after the fall of Nazism, she remained unapologetic, managing to control and shape her legacy. In personal documents, she mourns her “murdered ideals”. Riefenstahl represents many postwar Germans who, in letters and recorded telephone calls from her estate, dream of an organizing hand that will finally clean up the “shit-hole state”. Then, her work would also experience a renaissance, in a generation or two this time could come – what if they are right?

Screenings schedule:

September 30, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. at the Zhovten Cinema, Hegemon Hall

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DIRECTOR - ANDRES VEIEL

Biography

While still studying psychology in West Berlin in the 1980s, Veiel completed directing and dramaturgy training with Krzysztof Kieślowski at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien and staged several plays with a prison theater group at the Berlin-Tegel correctional facility. His first feature-length documentary Winternachtstraum (1992) was followed by the documentary Balagan (1993), which won the Peace Film Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and the German Film Award. Here he combined his work at the theater with his cinematic work – another common thread that runs through his entire oeuvre.

Andres Veiel's approach to filmmaking is characterized by intensive research, which sometimes takes several years. In the course of his artistic career, he has been honored with well over fifty awards for his documentaries and feature films as well as for his theater productions and writings, including the European Film Award, several German Film Awards, the Grimme Award, and the German Federal Cross of Merit 1^st Class. His plays have been translated into several languages, performed on more than 100 stages, and invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen, among other venues.

Selected filmography