Is there any filmmaker who is more controversial than Riefenstahl?
She was the actress who became a director – who often made technically brilliant films, but was part of the Nazi propaganda. She was friends with Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels, but claimed after the war that she was politically innocent and had not known about the Nazis' atrocities.
The documentary film about her, titled "Riefenstahl", is made by Andres Veiel, who has previously directed, among other things, a feature film about the Baader-Meinhof gang.
"Had to make the film"
When TT meets Veiel at the film festival in Venice, he tells us that he felt compelled to make the film.
When we see the images from "Triumph of the Will", with soldiers marching with their eyes straight ahead, then we think of Orbán and Trump and Putin. Fill in whatever name you want.
Veiel means that the offer to make the film was something he couldn't refuse. The starting point came when producer Sandra Maischberger gained access to Riefenstahl's posthumous material.
It was over 100 boxes with photos, notes, private films, tape recordings. Who could refuse? It gave me an opportunity to look deeper into how aesthetics collided with ideology, why she became who she was and how she held on to it after the war.
Was she sleeping with Hitler? I don't know. Was she raped by Goebbels? I don't know and I'm not even interested in that. I wanted to search for the roots of fascism, use a magnifying glass to see why people long for the superior and feel contempt for the weak.
Was she naive?
Riefenstahl, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 101, made films like "Triumph of the Will" (about the Nazi party days) and "The Great Olympic Games" (about the OS in Berlin).
Leni Riefenstahl constantly defended herself by saying that she was just an artist and filmmaker, that she hadn't understood the atrocities the Nazis committed. Was she really that naive? Veiel doesn't think so, and exemplifies it with a massacre.
Riefenstahl was going to film some German soldiers. A group of Jews who were digging ditches were in the way. She asked the soldiers to remove the Jews. They did – and shot them. She was more than a witness, she was a catalyst. It became a chain reaction, she caused the massacre, he says and continues.
But step by step, she came to believe what she herself said. It became a prototype for fake news, long before Trump. Today, she is hailed as a great artist by the far-right AFD.
Age: 65 years.
Lives: In Germany.
Occupation: Director.
Previous films: "Addicted to acting", "Time of resistance".
Current: With "Riefenstahl" which will have its cinema premiere on 18/4.
