RIEFENSTAHL

Synopsis

Leni Riefenstahl is considered one of the most controversial women of the 20th century. Her iconographic imagery of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and OLYMPIA stands for perfectly staged body worship, for the celebration of the superior and victorious. The aesthetics of their images seem more present than ever – and with them their message?

The film pursues this question using new documents from Riefenstahl’s estate – private films and photos, an unpublished making-of shoot, drafts of her memoirs, recorded telephone conversations with close companions, personal letters. The materials are questioned as to what they tell and what they conceal and are thus placed in an expanded context of history and the present.

Statement of the director(s)

Now as then Riefenstahl’s visual worlds are about triumph: triumph over doubt, ambivalence, supposed weakness and imperfection. Thus, looking at the world today, a film about Riefenstahl became an urgent necessity for me. Riefenstahl’s extensive legacy, reinterpreted in the light of her private estate, offered the opportunity for a new take on the timeless attraction of imperial greatness and its need for the glorification of muscular, perfect and victorious bodies, an urge that is on the rise again today.

Review

Screen International Review