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‘Riefenstahl’ Review: A New Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl Looks Closer at the Question: Was the Filmmaker Complicit in Nazi Crimes?
With a wealth of archival material, director Andres Veiel sheds light on The Riefenstahl Question. But there is still as much insinuation as evidence.
The controversy that has surrounded her first reared its head more than six decades ago, catching fire in the mid-1970s, when Susan Sontag published her influential and accusatory essay about Riefenstahl entitled “Fascinating Fascism.” That’s what makes “Riefenstahl,” a documentary by the German filmmaker Andres Veiel that premiered today at the Venice Film Festival, such a valuable and arresting piece of work. She then scaled the heights of filmmaking power to become, at least up until that point, the most commanding female movie director the world had known, channeling the marching-band-on-fascist-acid roiling masses of “Triumph of the Will” through her tidal aesthetic of feminine surge.
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