“Riefenstahl”: dismantling the myth of the filmmaker who beautified horror
The new documentary by Andres Veiel delves into the hidden legacy of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman who revolutionised 20th-century visual language in the service of one of history’s darkest ideologies. An uncomfortable, necessary and brutally timely piece of work.
Few figures evoke as many contradictions as Leni Riefenstahl. Visionary of the image. Pioneer of cinematic language. Muse of the aesthetics of power. And, above all, visual architect of Nazism. With a technical mastery still studied in film schools today, Riefenstahl captured totalitarian epic with a magnetism as dazzling as it was disturbing.
But where does art end and propaganda begin? And what happens when a brilliant gaze is placed in the service of horror?
In “Riefenstahl”, the new documentary by German director Andres Veiel, the true face of an artist who, for decades, managed to dodge the weight of history by repeatedly denying her responsibility is finally revealed.
Premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, the film offers more than a biographical account: it is an exercise in memory, justice, and narrative deconstruction.
A perfect image for a monstrous ideology
Riefenstahl’s work cannot be separated from the Nazi machinery. From “Triumph of the Will” (1935), with its choreography of the masses and its devotion to the figure of Hitler, to “Olympia” (1938), an ode to physical supremacy at the Berlin Olympic Games, every shot, every cut and every frame was a carefully crafted tool to glorify the regime.
Yet after the fall of the Third Reich, Riefenstahl reinvented herself: she presented herself as an apolitical artist, detached from barbarism, an aesthetic executor without ideology. She was tried but not convicted. And for decades, many accepted her version of events.
Archives, tapes and lies: the legacy that speaks
Veiel dismantles that narrative with surgical precision. His documentary is based on the analysis of hundreds of boxes from the filmmaker’s personal archive: diaries, letters, recordings, notes, and even cassette tapes capturing revealing phone calls.
Among the material, we find not only evidence confirming her complicity with Nazism — such as a letter in which she requested “removing some Jews” from a film set — but also proof that she openly supported far-right ideologies in later decades, voting for Holocaust-denying parties and endorsing authoritarian rhetoric well into the 1980s.
Can art ever be apolitical?
One of the documentary’s most compelling theses is also an urgent question: is it possible to create from a position of neutrality when filming power? Veiel’s answer is unequivocal. Riefenstahl not only knew exactly what she was doing: she knew precisely the effect she sought to produce. Her work was a tool of mass seduction. A beautified lie. And, in the director’s own words, “a precursor to fake news”.
The film also points out how history — and the art world — have been overly forgiving of her legacy. While her technical achievements continue to be praised, her role as a promoter of totalitarianism has often been softened or silenced.
A warning for the present
“Riefenstahl” is not only a reckoning with the past, but also a warning about the present. At a time when the far right is gaining ground in Europe and hate speech is re-emerging disguised as modernity, the documentary becomes a tool of cultural resistance.
Its premiere in Venice is no coincidence. As Veiel notes, screening this story in Meloni’s Italy, where post-fascism is in power, is both a political and a courageous decision.
The aesthetics of fascism, laid bare
Beyond historical analysis, the film forces us to confront the power of images. Riefenstahl was not an unblemished, brilliant filmmaker, but rather a highly skilled technician in the service of an exclusionary, supremacist and dangerous vision. Her cinema was not merely beautiful: it was effective, viral, toxic.
Veiel sums it up with precision: “Fascism does not begin in 1933. In her, it was already there before. Riefenstahl is the prototype of fascism”.
A necessary film
Riefenstahl is uncomfortable, revealing and profoundly timely — not only for what it recounts, but for what it denounces: that forgetting, when accompanied by aestheticism, can become just another form of propaganda.
In times of revisionism and relativism, looking into the eyes of those who beautified horror is an act of responsibility — and of courage.
Available on Movistar+.
