Director: Andres Veiel

Mining a wealth of material that became available from the estate of the controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, following her death at the age of 102 in 2003, Veiel’s film is an attempt to discover whether the artist was an active Nazi collaborator or just tragically naïve. There is a terrible dreamlike beauty in the early passages, with sepia-tinted clips of the then-actress Riefenstahl, playing a doughty idealised German woman as she, literally, scales the peaks in Arnold Franck’s 1926 film ‘The Holy Mountain’. Becoming a director, Riefenstahl made her reputation with the hugely influential, Hitler-anointing 1935 documentary ‘The Triumph of the Will’, followed by 1938 Olympics chronicle, the aesthetically bold and ground-breaking ‘Olympia’, which showcased Leni’s penchant for healthy idealised forms. While Veil’s film does not dig deep narratively into the innovative strides she made in her films, several shots here mirror Riefenstahl;s techniques, occasionally to bitterly ironic effect. That she was pally with Hitler is well-established, but it is footage from a 1970s German chat show that is the most damning as Riefenstahl hisses at accusations that she was a Nazi collaborator. Even more disturbing are recordings of phone messages following the broadcast from various true believers complaining that she was ambushed. Despite these electric moments, the picture feels a little overlong and ultimately more like a reiteration than an investigation.

David Willoughby

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