Riefenstahl

East Coast Premiere

Winner of the prestigious Cinema & Arts Award at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, Riefenstahl offers a fascinating exploration of one of cinema's most contentious figures. With unprecedented access to Leni Riefenstahl's personal archives—including never-before-seen films, photos, recordings, and letters—director Andres Veiel delivers a compelling and unsettling portrait of the Nazi propagandist whose films, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, helped define fascist aesthetics and continue to provoke debate about art and ideology.

Despite her well-documented relationships with Hitler and other Nazi leaders, Riefenstahl spent decades denying her complicity in their regime, casting herself as an artist detached from the horrors of the Holocaust. This captivating film confronts this claim, peeling back the layers of denial and manipulation that Riefenstahl carefully constructed around her legacy. Through unprecedented access to her estate, including never-before-seen personal films, photos, recordings, and letters, it offers a deeply unsettling portrait of an artist who remained unapologetic, even after the fall of Nazism.

More than just a biography, Riefenstahl delves into the dark undercurrents of her work, questioning the lingering power of her aesthetics in today's world. The film challenges us to confront the mechanisms of manipulation embedded in Riefenstahl’s films—mechanisms that, disturbingly, continue to resonate in modern times. Essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the original sin of cinematic propaganda and its chilling echoes in the present, Riefenstahl is a timely and stark reminder of the ways in which visual storytelling can shape and distort historical narratives.