{"id":214579,"date":"2025-09-10T04:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214579\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T04:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:19:09","slug":"leni-riefenstahl-documentary-shows-she-was-no-apolitical-filmmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214579\/","title":{"rendered":"Leni Riefenstahl Documentary Shows She Was No Apolitical Filmmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLeni Riefenstahl<\/a>, known to history as Hitler\u2019s favorite filmmaker, has long enjoyed a remarkable degree of approval in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino has expressed admiration for her cinematic gifts, and Francis Ford Coppola reportedly dined with her at the first Telluride Film Festival in 1974 where both directors were honored. A 2007\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0magazine piece reported, \u201cGeorge Lucas praised her modernity and acknowledged the indebtedness of\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0to [Riefenstahl<\/a>\u2019s]\u00a0Triumph of the Will.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch flattery reflects Riefenstahl\u2019s success after World War II in scrubbing her reputation of complicity with the Nazi regime and a widespread buy-in to her carefully crafted narrative: that she was an apolitical artist who merely took assignments from Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. That fantasy is exploded in the documentary\u00a0Riefenstahl, directed by German filmmaker Andres Veiel<\/a>. It\u2019s now playing in U.S. theaters through Kino Lorber and will get a campaign for Oscar consideration.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the new edition of Deadline\u2019s Doc Talk<\/a> podcast, Veiel explains how he uncovered evidence that Riefenstahl \u2013 far from being an artist unwillingly drafted into the service of Hitler \u2013 in fact enthusiastically adopted Nazi ideology beginning in the early 1930s. By combing diligently through her archives along with his producer, journalist Sandra Maischberger, Veiel found damning material overlooked by other researchers \u2013 including friendly post-war communication between Riefenstahl and Third Reich official Albert Speer, noted architect and Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Nazis.<\/p>\n

\n\tVeiel tells us about chilling evidence he discovered that Riefenstahl witnessed war crimes shortly after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and that she used Roma confined in a concentration camp as extras in a wartime film production \u2013 innocent people who were later put to death by the Nazis. He also reveals Riefenstahl\u2019s reaction when an important cinematographer on her film\u00a0Olympia\u00a0was later sent to a mental institution and forcibly sterilized in accordance with Nazi belief in eugenics.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s on the latest edition of Doc Talk, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave,\u00a0Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline\u2019s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley\u2019s N\u014d Studios.<\/p>\n

\n\tListen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including\u00a0Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0iHeart<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Apple<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leni Riefenstahl, known to history as Hitler\u2019s favorite filmmaker, has long enjoyed a remarkable degree of approval in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":214580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[117320,117321,117322,171,117323,53,117324,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-214579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-andres-veiel","9":"tag-doc-talk","10":"tag-doc-talk-podcast","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-leni-riefenstahl","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-riefenstahl","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}