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“For something to be remembered other things must be forgotten,” narrator Andrew Bird notes near the start of Andres Veiel’s thorough and psychologically fascinating and disturbing consideration of Leni Riefenstahl – a formidable directing talent, no doubt, but whose work is inextricably linked to Hitler and the Nazis. Selective memory was something Riefenstahl excelled at and, as a director, she was also adept at staying on message in the face of counter evidence, something which Veiel scrutinises throughout.

Riefenstahl was meticulous in terms of collecting her archive and Veiel draws on this extensively, along with interviews with the director, who unceasingly worked to rehabilitate her image throughout her 101-year life. Looking at her around the time she made her debut film, The Blue Light, she looks every inch the Hollywood starlet. Soon, however, she would be cosying up to Hitler, making the infamous propaganda piece Triumph Of The Will...

Vertigo Releasing’s The Surfer leads the new releases in UK and Ireland cinemas this weekend as Universal’sThe Wedding Banquetand Altitude’sOcean With David Attenboroughare also out.

Nicholas Cage stars in Lorcan Finnegan’s psychological thriller The Surferwhich rides into 388 locations. The acclaimed actor plays a father who returns to his childhood beach in Australia and conflicts with the locals. The film premiered in Cannes Midnight Screenings last year.

Cage’s recent openings include Longlegs; Dream Scenario and Renfield.

Also out is The Wedding Banquetin 254 locations for Universal. A remake of the 1993 film of the same name, Bowen Yang...

Leni Riefenstahl checks her appearance for the recording of the three-part documentary "Speer Und Er" by director Heinrich Breloer Photo: Bavaria Media

Director Andres Veiel turns his attention to the notorious artist, filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. With access to her estate, his documentary, Riefenstahl, uses previously unseen photographs, written documents, audio recordings as well as unpublished handwritten notes and excerpts for her biography. Veiel sifts through these to construct a thoroughly detailed portrait of the woman synonymous with one of history's darkest chapters.

Veiel's filmmaking has explored a range of subjects from an Israeli-Palestinian theatre group in Balagan (1994), the critical exploration into the identities of far-left militant terrorist Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen, the banker whose murder Grams was suspected of, and If Not Us, Who?, a drama about a German couple who become part of the far-left militant Baader-Meinhof Group. He has also directed Bueys (2017), a biography...

A new documentary delves into controversial German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl’s private archive to uncover a director who spent a lifetime covering up her central role in the Nazi propaganda machine

Leni Riefenstahl had several successes at the Venice film festival. In 1932, the festival’s inaugural year, the German film-maker’s mystical mountain drama The Blue Light made the official selection. In 1934, she picked up a gold medal for Triumph of the Will, her chronicle of the Nazi party congress in Nuremberg. In 1938, 10 weeks before Kristallnacht, she won best foreign film with Olympia, a two-part documentary of the summer Olympics in Berlin that was commissioned and financed by the Nazi government, overseen by the Reich ministry of propaganda and enlightenment, and released on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

After the war, and until the day she died, aged 101, in 2003, Riefenstahl insisted that her films were only ever about award-winning art. Through the postwar decades,...

Leave it to Curb Your Enthusiasm star and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David to know just how to skewer Bill Maher. The Real Time host — who recently had a much-publicized dinner with Donald Trump — is no stranger to stoking controversy with his political viewpoints over the years. But it seems as though his recent capitulation to the United States' current Commander-in-Chief has really struck a chord. Enough, at least, to elicit a scathingly hilarious response from Larry David in the form of a satirical op-ed for The New York Times.

In the piece, titled "My Dinner With Adolf," David makes several direct references to Maher's dinner — and the subsequent 13-minute opening monologue that followed on his late-night show. According to Maher, the whole thing was set up by Trump and his mutual friend... the musician Kid Rock. All was done under the guise of talking to one another because hating...

Fascism: Arguably the most insidious and evil political ideology to have ever been created. Less a true belief than a cynical way to control and stifle opposition, fascism emerged in the early 20th century in Italy, with Benito Mussolini’s reign as dictator of the country from 1922 to 1945, and is most famously (at least in the United States) associated with Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. But it’s a means of governance that can infect any country. At its core, fascism is a far-right authoritarian philosophy that puts the nation above the individual, and is characterized by an autocratic government, a dictatorial leader with unobstructed power, heavy militarism, severe economic regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. It’s a terrifying force that at its core, believes in the dehumanization and oppression of human beings. Good thing we in the United States don’t have to worry about it!

Oh…wait a minute…...

"Doesn't an artist have a special responsibility?" Madman Films in Australia has unveiled an official trailer for a documentary film titled Riefenstahl, yes indeed a look back at the controversial and iconic German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. This premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival that year and earned great reviews at this fest, before playing at many others including at Zurich & Stockholm. A real, meaningful doc. The film explores Leni Riefenstahl's artistic legacy and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her self-portrayal with evidence suggesting awareness of the regime's atrocities. "A captivating insight into the private estate of Leni Riefenstahl, who became world-famous with her Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will but kept denying any closer ties to the regime." The doc asks: How could Riefenstahl rise to become the Reich’s leading filmmaker while persistently denying any close ties to Hitler and Goebbels? It turns out that...

Mark Cousins says ChatGPT presented him with an “exact summary” of a book he wrote almost 30 years ago, when he was researching his new film Story Of Documentary Film.

The Northern Irish filmmaker was speaking in a ‘A Morning With’ conversation at Cph:dox, with Toronto film festival documentary programmer Thom Powers.

“When I started this project, I asked ChatGPT, ‘What is the history of documentary?’” said Cousins, in response to a question about his thoughts on AI technologies. “If it can do it, I don’t need to,” joked the director.

“You know what it did? It was an exact...

The drive from Thessaloniki’s airport into the city begins like any other: car dealerships and furniture stores that give way to bustling street life. Home to over a million people, with a teeming port and the country’s largest university, Thessaloniki is the second-biggest city in Greece with a populace that only grows denser as you wind your way past its Byzantine walls and Roman Rotunda towards the glistening Aegean Sea. Attending the city’s biannual film festivals, I’ve taken this journey several times in the last few years, most recently on a shuttle with Dionysia Kopana, a filmmaker from Athens whose latest, NovaMax Skyland, was premiering the following night. Along the way Kopana spoke about the precarious independent cinema scene in Greece, the earthquake that recently threatened to sink Santorini, and the demonstrations that had been breaking out across the country that week to mark the anniversary...

The 75th anniversary edition of the Berlin Film Festival — and the first under the leadership of its new chief, Tricia Tuttle — drew to a close Saturday night, as the jury awarded the Golden Bear to Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Dreams (Sex Love).”

There’s a special poetry in giving this film — the portrait of a teenage girl with a passionate imagination who pours her intense feelings toward a teacher into a transformative personal essay — the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The film represents the third installment in the Norwegian writer-director’s “Dream Sex Love” trilogy. The first, “Sex,” premiered a year earlier in the Panorama section of the 2024 Berlin Film Fest, while “Love” debuted in competition at Venice late last summer.

“The film is called ‘Drømmer’ — it’s Norwegian for ‘dreams’ — and this was beyond my wildest dreams really,” said Haugerud, in accepting the prize from jury president Todd Haynes.

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud has won the 2025 Berlinale Golden Bear for Dreams, a queer love story that completes his verbally explicit, but visually chaste Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy.

The deceptively ambitious drama follows a teenage girl’s infatuation with her female teacher, told mostly in retrospect, as the teen recounts her memories through a novel she has written about the events. In his review, The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney called the film “tender, captivating and often very funny,” noting the fact that Haugerud has made “three thematically related but narratively distinct features in a year is remarkable enough; that they are all terrific, even more so.”

The Berlin jury, headed by Carol director Todd Haynes, picked Dreams from the 19 titles in competition at the 75th Berlinale.

Rose Byrne and Andrew Scott won top acting honors at this year’s Berlinale film festival, with Byrne winning...

Beta Cinema has notched up further sales onAndres Veiel’s Venice premiereRiefenstahl, which seeks to prove controversial German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was the Nazi propagandist she tried deny she was.

The feature documentary has been acquired by Dogwoof for the UK and Ireland, Madman Entertainment for Australia and New Zealand, and Lev Cinemas for Israel.

Riefenstahl became famous for her Nazi propaganda filmTriumph Of The Willbut denied any closer ties to the regime.Riefenstahlis a six-year investigation into her private papers that aims to prove this denial was a convenient lie.

Produced by German political journalist Sandra Maischberger, the film...

Amsterdam-based sales agency Film Harbour has secured the world rights – excluding the Netherlands and Belgium – to documentary “The Propagandist,” which world premieres in IDFA’s International Competition next month.

Film Harbour was launched earlier this year by seasoned documentary sales executive Liselot Verbrugge, former CEO of Deckert Distribution, as revealed exclusively by Variety.

“The Propagandist” is directed by Dutch filmmaker Luuk Bouwman, and is produced by Ilja Roomans for Netherland’s Docmakers.

Using previously unpublished interviews, family films and propaganda films, “The Propagandist” tells the story of the rise and fall of Dutch filmmaker Jan Teunissen (1898-1975). As head of the Department of Film of the Dutch Nazi Party and SS, he became the most powerful man in the Dutch film industry during World War II.

Teunissen, nicknamed the “Film King” and the “Dutch Leni Riefenstahl” was a well-known filmmaker before the war. The film asks: What drove him to...

The fall festival season has wrapped up! Each year, dozens of movies premiere at festivals with distributors looking to launch them before they’re released in theaters or on streaming services. But dozens more are independent films without distribution that came to the festivals looking to be discovered. This year, over 200 movies made their world premieres across the Venice Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Telluride Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival, and we’ve seen some big name movie sales across all four.

Right as Venice got underway, we saw U.S. deals for two of the biggest competition titles on the slate, Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” to Netflix and Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” to A24. A24 also picked up the rights to Venice Silver Lion winner “The Brutalist” in a competitive situation. And some of the hottest discoveries like “Nutcrackers,” “September 5,” and TIFF Audience...

Leni Riefenstahl’s films from her time working with the Nazi Party have left an indelible mark on cinema. With Triumph of the Will and Olympia, she crafted stunning pieces of propaganda that also pioneered new techniques. However, her relationship with the Third Reich has been the source of much debate. Riefenstahl always insisted she was just an artist, not a believer in Nazi ideology.

In Riefenstahl, director Andres Veiel seeks to provide a fuller picture of this enigmatic figure. With unprecedented access to Riefenstahl’s personal archives, he examines her career and the narrative she crafted after WWII. Through archival interviews stretching from the 1960s to her death in 2003, her own films, and material from over 700 boxes of records, a more complex truth emerges.

Veiel explores the enthusiastic support Riefenstahl showed the Nazis in her earliest works. He also reveals evidence that contradicts her claims, like recordings where she...

Stanley Kubrick's award-winning Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket is stirring up controversy after the Donald Trump presidential campaign used clips from the film for a "propaganda" video. One of the stars of the film, Matthew Modine, has now unequivocally blasted the campaign's appropriation of Kubrick's masterpiece, calling it a perversion of Full Metal Jacket's pivotal anti-war message. However, in a surprise twist, the late director's daughter Vivian Kubrick declared via social media that the former Potus has her blessing in using the movie "to [help] the cause of freedom."

Sections from the 1987 psychological war drama have begun to appear in videos at Trump rallies to spread a vision of the former president's ideal military. The clips in question highlight R. Lee Ermey's vulgar and often racist rampages as the battle-hardened Marine Sargent in charge of whipping Modine's Private Joker and other new recruits into shape. This...

The Donald Trump presidential campaign’s use of clips from Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Oscar-nominated Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket has polarized those close to the pic indeed, with the late filmmaker’s daughter Vivian Kubrick declaring “Trump has my blessing” to the pic’s star Matthew Modine blasting that the former Potus has turned the anti-war feature “into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.”

Trump’s recent rallies have begun using the video below which include Full Metal Jacket actor R. Lee Emery’s tough, racist and vulgar ridden Marine Sergeant blasting Modine’s Private Joker. Those bits are labeled “Then”. This is followed by clips that show support for the LGBTQ+ in the military captioned “Now” and “The Biden Harris Military.” The propaganda video ends with a shot from Full Metal Jacket before the recruits are sent to Vietnam, with the saying “Let’S Make Our Military Great Again.

Matthew Modine is comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler after Trump used footage from the actor’s iconic movie “Full Metal Jacket” in a recent campaign ad touting the U.S. military. Modine starred as the wisecracking marine J. T. “Joker” Davis in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 anti-war movie. Trump used clips from the film in an ad that he shared on social media with the following caption: “We will not have a woke military!”

“In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda films ‘Triumph of the Will’ and ‘Olympia,'” Modine told Entertainment Weekly in an emailed statement about Trump’s ad. “These two films are considered among the most effective propaganda ever made. Riefenstahl denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, repeatedly invoking the ‘how could we have known?’ defense. Ironically, Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.

5 Must-See Films with Powerful Female Leads at the 2024 Mami Festival: The Mami Film Festival 2024 will showcase a remarkable selection of thought-provoking films that transcend cultural and geographical boundaries. Among these, films such as Angammal, April, Riefenstahl, Armand, and Shambhala stand out for their distinct narratives and powerful cinematic vision. Each film delves into profound themes, from gender politics and societal expectations to the complexities of tradition and modernity, delivering compelling stories with nuanced performances and striking visuals. Audiences at Mami 2024 can expect an immersive journey through diverse landscapes of human experience, with these films with female leads are sets to leave a lasting impression on the global cinematic conversation.

Angammal

Written and Directed by Vipin Radhakrishnan

Language: Tamil

Country: India

“Angammal” is a thought-provoking film that delves deeply into themes of social propriety, bodily autonomy, and rural-urban tensions, all while remaining grounded in the evocative world of Perumal Murugan’s storytelling.

Joseph Goebbels was a master of propaganda who knew how to sway public opinion like few others. As Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda, he had unprecedented control over Germany’s media and used this power to spread the Nazi message. The new film Führer und Verführer directed by Joachim A. Lang reveals how Goebbels orchestrated displays of support for Hitler with meticulous precision.

We see him ensuring Hitler’s welcome to Berlin after annexing Austria in 1938 goes exactly to plan. A prearranged girl presents the Führer with flowers at the optimal moment for the cameras. Goebbels wants footage that will solidify Hitler’s image for generations. Every shot must project strength and popularity.

Though focused on Goebbels, the movie also shines light on his complex relationship with Hitler. At first the two seem inseparable, but Hitler’s unbending nationalism emerges while Goebbels still enjoys the glories of peacetime. When war comes,...

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Andres Veiel’s Venice prizewinning documentary “Riefenstahl,” a critical portrait of Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker and Nazi propagandist who was close to Adolf Hitler.

Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release in 2025, followed by a digital, educational, and home video release.

Produced by Sandra Maischberger, “Riefenstahl” world premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it received the Cinema & Arts Award. The movie played Telluride Film Festival and will next screen at the Zurich Film Festival.

Riefenstah directed films such as “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” which are defined by their fascist aesthetics. Her friendship with Hitler and other Nazi dignitaries was well documented during WW2. Yet, Riefenstahl, who first broke into the German film industry as an actress, spent decades after the war denying her association with Nazi ideology and claiming ignorance of the Holocaust.

“Riefenstahl” features materials from Leni Riefenstahl’s estate,...

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Andres Veiel’s Venice prize-winning documentary Riefenstahl about the infamous German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

Veiel uses previously unpublicised materials from Riefenstahl’s estate, including private films, photos, recordings and letters, to explore how she become the Reich’s preeminent filmmaker.

The film won the Cinema & Arts Award on the Lido, went on to screen at Telluride, and will play at Zurich Film Festival.

It shows how, after starting out as an actress, Riefenstahl broke into filmmaking and became a propagandist of huge influence. She directed Triumph Of The Will (1935), the documentary about...

While its been widely reported that Juror #2 would be Clint Eastwoods final outing as a director, that might not be the case if recent rumors prove to be true. The courtroom drama starring Nicolas Hulot hits theaters on November 1 from Warner Bros. Pictures, and focuses on a juror in a high profile murder trial who finds himself struggling with a moral dilemma that he could use to sway the jury verdict, and potentially either convict the accused killer, or set him free.

A supposed source close to World of Reels Jordan Ruimy told him back in July that Eastwood was already reading scripts for what could be his next movie, claiming the 94-year-old star is in no hurry to call it quits. As to when we might expect the news to break about the supposed film? Ruimy believes it could be as soon as later this month following Juror #2s...

Hello Insiders. It’s getting colder in Europe, but the news in TV and film has been hot and spicy in the week Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris. Jesse Whittock here taking you. Let’s go, and don’t forget to sign up here.

TIFF’s Russia Doc Pulled

‘Russians at War’ director Anastasia Trofimova in Venice

War doc shelved: This year’s Toronto Film Festival had been surprisingly quiet until Thursday afternoon when the festival said it had paused upcoming screenings of Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary Russians at War “effective immediately” after learning about “significant threats to festival operations and public safety.” The decision was made “in order to ensure the safety of all festival guests, staff, and volunteers,” TIFF said in a statement, adding, “This is an unprecedented move.” Russians at War provides a rare insight into life for Russian soldiers on the frontline in Ukraine.

A new documentary that shows the day-to-day lives of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine is causing controversy ahead of its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. The film, called “Russians at War,” offers an intimate look at Russian forces on the frontlines through unprecedented access to combat units. Director Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, embedded with troops for seven months in occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. She captured soldiers’ experiences amidst the ongoing conflict, which has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions.

However, the documentary has drawn criticism from some who argue it whitewashes Russian war crimes. Yulia Kovaliv, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, said on social media that showing the film could try to excuse the wrongdoings of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Ukrainian advocacy groups have urged the film festival to cancel the screening. They question why the documentary received Cad$340,000 in government funds from Canada,...

Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova’s doc Russians at War makes its North American debut in Toronto this week, following a world premiere in Venice, amid calls from Ukrainian diplomats in Canada for the festival to pull the film.

The two-hour work, for which Trofimova embedded with Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine over a period of seven months, gives never before seen insight into their lives on the frontline.

But the empathetic gaze on these men and women as Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine – in a military campaign that has caused at least 35,000 civilian casualties, including 11,520 deaths; flattened cities, towns and villages, and displaced 16 million people – has provoked outrage in some quarters.

Comments on Deadline to an article on the film out of the Venice press conference, have likened Trofimova to German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who was branded a Nazi propagandist for her films Triumph of the Will and Olympia,...

The 2024 Venice Film Festival awards ceremony has wrapped up after a sweltering week and a half on the Lido.

The prestigious Golden Lion award for best film went to Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. The Spaniard’s first-ever English-language feature received a whopping 17-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the festival. Almodóvar said in his acceptance speech Saturday: “I would like to dedicate it to my family, who is here now… This movie The Room Next Door, it is my first movie in English.. but the spirit is Spanish.”

His film, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, follows best-selling writer Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) as they rekindle their friendship after losing touch. As they immerse themselves in past memories, anecdotes, art and movies, Martha, battling terminal cervical cancer, wants to die with dignity and asks Ingrid to be...

Afternoon Insiders, here we are once again, another week and another busy one in the world of international film and TV. Sign up to the newsletter here. Or read on.

Splashy Last Week On The Lido

Uncharacteristically buzzy: The Venice Film Festival ends tomorrow after an uncharacteristically buzzy second week. The festival is usually front-loaded, with the splashiest titles playing early. This year, however, Alberto Barbera, who dished to Andreas, said the lengthy runtimes of some competition titles meant the spoils had to spread across both weeks. Enter Brady Corbet’s 215-minute post-wwii epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Stacy Martin, Raffey Cassidy, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé and Alessandro Nivola. The pic was well received, landing a 13-minute ovation from the Sala Grande audience. Pedro Almodóvar launched his English-language debut The Room Next Door with his leading ladies Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, a new documentary on the infamous Nazi-era German director Leni Riefenstahl, has sold strongly internationally following its world premiere at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals.

Beta Cinema, who are handling world sales on the film, locked down deals across Europe for the documentary, including with Arp for France, Filmin for Spain, Midas Filmes for Portugal, Edge Entertainment in Scandinavia, Against Gravity for Poland, Cirko Film for Hungary, Imagine in Benelux and McF for the territories of the former Yugoslavia. Longride Entertainment will release the film in Japan. Additional territories are currently in negotiation.

In Germany, Riefenstahl will go out via Majestic, with Italian distribution handled by the film’s co-producer Rai Cinema.

Veiel and Riefenstahl producer, the acclaimed German journalist and political talk show host Sandra Maischberger, spent six years pouring over more than 700 boxes of film, writing, audio and other documents from Leni Reifenstahl...

German director Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl has notched up sales to key territories following its premieres at Venice and Teulluride.

Riefenstahl investigates the influential director Leni Riefenstahl’s close involvement with the Nazis.

Munich-based World Sales company Beta Cinema announced deals for France (Arp), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Midas Filmes), Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Benelux (Imagine), Poland (Against Gravity), Hungary (Cirko Film), former Yugoslavia (McF) and Japan (Longride Entertainment). Additional territories are currently in negotiation. German distribution had previously been agreed with Majestic and Italian distribution through co-producer Rai Cinema.

Veiel’s film, produced by German political journalist Sandra Maischberger, is...

Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl – unpicking the deceits of German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl – has scored a slew of deals following its world premiere at Venice and North American launch at Telluride.

Munich-based World Sales company Beta Cinema announced deals to France (Arp), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Midas Filmes), Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Benelux (Imagine), Poland (Against Gravity), Hungary (Cirko Film), former Yugoslavia (McF) and Japan (Longride Entertainment).

As previously announced Majestic is releasing the film in Germany while the Italian release is being handled by co-producer Rai Cinema. Additional territories are currently in negotiation.

Related: Venice Golden Lion Winners : Photos Of The Festival’s Top Films Through The Years

Riefenstahl is one of the most controversial filmmakers of the 20th century as an artist and a Nazi propagandist, thanks to her 1930s films Triumph of the Will and Olympia — capturing the 1934 Nazi Party convention in Nuremberg and the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Berlin.

Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.

A deep dive into Leni Riefenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.

Veiel was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films, who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016.

“For me, it is the right festival for the film,” Veiel tells Variety. “The political situation in German and Italy is similar — with the rise of the right-wing, and a longing for propaganda and fake news. For a debate about the film,...

One of the most eye-opening, chilling, fascinating, and frightening documentaries this year just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It's titled Riefenstahl, referencing the iconic & also infamous German female filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The film is sort of a biopic taking us through her life as a filmmaker, though it actually ends up being an indictment regarding her past association with the Nazis in the 1930s & 40s. It's the latest film directed by acclaimed German filmmaker Andres Veiel, who previously made the excellent doc Beuys (which I saw at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival and wrote about back then). For much of the film, I was wondering if Veiel is trying to portray Riefenstahl as a misunderstood artist unfairly scrutinized, or if he was going to lean in on hinting she has always been a Nazi. It's the latter. There's no debate anymore. After watching scene after scene of irrefutable evidence (which...

The infamous and virtuosic Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl made the two documentaries she became legendary for, “Triumph of the Will” (1935) and “Olympiad” (1938), nearly 90 years ago. She herself lived to 101 (she died in 2003). 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.”

Ever since then, there has been a hot-button ferocity to what we might call The Riefenstahl Question. That heightened quality — like the question itself — refuses to die. The question is: Is it fair to brand this Nazi filmmaker a Nazi collaborator? She made her films for Hitler, who she was personally chummy with, so there’s no doubt that on some level she made a deal with the devil. But what was the deal? What, exactly, did she know?

The debate about Leni...

No matter how much we might want to purge the ideology reflected by and reinforced in Leni Riefenstahl’s films from our cultural lives, her aesthetic influence is impossible to escape.

Every Olympics, NBC’s innovations evolve from common visual goals: allowing the camera to track races more fluidly, slowing down the action to showcase bodies in motion, discovering angles that redefine our way of seeing events.

Everything stems from the grammar established by Riefenstahl in 1938’s Olympia, just as so much of what we view as the aesthetics of political power finds a template in her 1935 Triumph of the Will. But in acknowledging these connections, we’re constantly forced to wrestle with the same questions concerning what Riefenstahl knew or didn’t know about the regime and the messages she was putting on film, and the degree to which her art can be separated from the service she put it to.

Andres Veiel shows how the film-maker loved by Hitler hit the heights with her Berlin Olympics movie – and how she tried and failed to save her Nazi-tinged reputation

Leni Riefenstahl returns to the Venice film festival, after a fashion, as the star of Andres Veiel’s extraordinary deep-dive documentary about the original cancelled artist. It was here, at Mussolini-era Venice in 1938, that Riefenstahl scooped the top prize for Olympia, her sublime, suspect paean to the Berlin Olympics. Her career hit the heights on the Lido, after which it plunged straight to hell. Veiel’s film shows how it happened, and how she tried and failed to salvage her reputation.

Riefenstahl does not come to praise or reclaim the late director, but nor does it mean to bury her. It acknowledges her as a trailblazer: a driven female artist in a male-dominated industry whose poetic eye and technical nous turned the medium on its head.

Leni Riefenstahl, who died in 2003, aged 101, remains forever Google-able as “Hitler’s favorite director” for her daringly innovative documentaries The Triumph of the Will, about the Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1934, and Olympia, about the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Acclaimed and infamous in equal measures —was she a pioneering genius, a Nazi propagandist, or maybe both? — Riefenstahl remains a subject of fascination and debate over whether her talent can be separated from her political views.

What exactly those views were, what Riefenstahl knew about Hitler and the Holocaust and when she knew it, is key to this debate and the subject of countless books and documentaries. It’s the question at the center of Riefenstahl, the new documentary from German filmmaker Andres Veiel (Black Box Brd).

The documentary screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, the same festival where Leni Riefenstahl won a gold medal for The Triumph...

Letter in Leni Riefenstahl archive appears to claim her set instructions led to deaths of Polish Jews, says director

A new documentary on the Nazis’ favourite film-maker and lead propagandist Leni Riefenstahl suggests she was a direct witness to murderous crimes of the Third Reich she later claimed to have known nothing about, and may even have contributed to one herself.

The film Riefenstahl, which premieres at the Venice film festival at the end of August, also claims that the propagandist admired the party and its henchmen until her death at 101 in 2003, a sentiment that ran counter to her insistence that she was not signed up to the Nazi cause.

Curiously, for a woman who directed a movie called Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl seemed to lose control over her own person when she first met Adolf Hitler.

“I had hot sweats,” the German filmmaker said of seeing the future Führer speak at a rally in 1932. “I was somehow captured, as by a magnetic force.”

Embedded in that description is a self-defense: She may as well have said, “I wasn’t to blame, I couldn’t help it, I was overwhelmed by Hitler’s presence, like millions of other Germans.”

The new documentary Riefenstahl, premiering Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, argues the German filmmaker carefully crafted a narrative absolving herself of responsibility for becoming Hitler’s favored cinematic propagandist.

“In a way, it is a detective story, because she is lying,” director Andres Veiel tells Deadline. “She’s manipulating.”

Leni Riefenstahl crouches beneath a camera.

After Germany’s defeat in World War II,...

Alberto Barbera, it must be said, has done it again.

The long-running director of the Venice Film Festival, who successfully repositioned the august Italian cinema event as an awards-season launchpad, on Tuesday unveiled another top-shelf lineup for the 81st Biennale (Aug. 28-Sept. 7). And, as Kendall Roy would say, it’s “all bangers, all the time.”

Alongside tentpole studio sequels — Warner Bros. will kick off the festival with the out-of-competition screening of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Todd Phillips returns to the Lido competition with Joker: Folie à Deux, the follow-up to his 2019 Golden Lion-winner Joker — Barbera has selected a tasty mix of established auteurs and up-and-coming talent that looks to appeal both to critics and international buyers.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie À Deux.

Pedro Almodóvar is back in Venice with The Room Next Door, the hotly-anticipated English-language feature debut from the Oscar-winning Spanish director. Tilda Swinton...

The Beatles are getting some attention at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which unveiled its 2024 lineup on Tuesday.

The legendary band, who dominated the music industry for an entire decade from 1960, has earned spots in the prestigious fest’s documentary section in different capacities. Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ doc One to One: John & Yoko focuses on the intense and public relationship between the two artists, while Things We Said Today from Romania’s Andrei Ujica, on the other hand, is a look at the band’s famous and first North American tour – a film that was supposed to be ready 10 years ago.

On John Lennon’s official website, Macdonald’s feature documentary from Mercury Studios is described as “a moving look at the couple’s life upon their entry into a transformative 1970’s New York, exploring their musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world.” Macdonald himself said: “I...

The Venice Film Festival on Tuesday unveiled its official, star-packed lineup for its 81st edition, which runs from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7.

Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 Golden Lion-winning Joker, will also bow in Venice. Joaquin Phoenix, who won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, in the original, returns in the musical sequel, with Lady Gaga playing Harley Quinn, his love interest and partner in crime. Zazie Beetz, Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener co-star.

Venice favorites Brad Pitt and George Clooney will return to the Lido with Wolfs, an action drama from Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home) about two lone-wolf fixers assigned to the same job. The film, an Apple Original Films production that Columbia/Sony will release theatrically worldwide, will screen out of competition, as will Broken Rage, the latest feature from legendary Japanese director Takeshi Kitano.

Angelina Jolie...

While cameras have opened windows to the world for over two centuries, Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s documentary Fantastic Machine explores how that lens has also warped our sense of reality and ourselves. Danielson and Van Aertryck take viewers on a dynamic visual journey across history, illuminating how the way humans photograph and present their lives has transformed with advancing technology.

We begin in 1827 with photography’s birth, traveling through cinema’s golden age to witness audiences first encountering moving images. Television emerged next, transporting sight and sound into living rooms worldwide. Each breakthrough magnified humanity’s ability to shape perceived truths, as propaganda proved. Yet the directors find poignancy too, like Holocaust archivists fighting denial through documentation.

Their montage reaches current times, where self-curation saturates social networks, demanding perfection and notoriety. Influencers showcase enviable personas, while doubtful authenticity plagues some’reality’ shared. Have we lost sight of inner truth,...

Above: 1980 Japanese poster for Apocalypse Now. Design by Eiko Ishioka, artwork by Haruo Takino.With Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestated Megalopolis having premiered yesterday at Cannes, it's a good time to look back at the posters from his 60-year-long career. The only problem is that many posters for his films are either too well known or nothing to write home about. Like Coppola’s career itself, there are peaks and valleys—one of my very first posts for Notebook, almost exactly fifteen years ago, was about the gorgeous design for The Rain People (1969)—but a career retrospective of his posters seems like it might result in less than the sum of its parts. Yet of all his posters there are three rare Japanese designs that have always stood out as utterly extraordinary: two for Apocalypse Now (1979) and one for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).I’ve always seen these posters attributed to Eiko Ishioka,...

In anticipation of director Steven Spielberg providing a vibrant 'Leni Riefenstahl’ -type cinematic vision to August’s ‘Democrat National Convention’ in Chicago, take a look at ‘Deep Fake’ parodies, available on YouTube, that underscore Spielberg’s involvement:

“…Spielberg has attended multiple strategy sessions, offering his insights on how best to tell the president’s story and highlight his vision at this summer’s convention.

“The Spielberg campaign will rely on film streamed online, although Spielberg will not confirm whether or not he will create a film portion for this summer’s events…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Starship Troopers' shower scene is a subversive moment that reveals the dark hints about the society it takes place in. The co-ed shower scene highlights the expendability of all characters, regardless of background or gender, serving as fodder for the military. As the film ages, the satire of Starship Troopers becomes more relevant, critiquing society's obsession with conflict and the dehumanization of enemies.

It might seem like an excuse to include nudity, but the Starship Troopers shower scene is actually one of the most subversive in the satirical sci-fi. Starship Troopers is considered Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven's last great American movie, and on the surface, it's about a bunch of good-looking soldiers flying to a distant planet to fight a race of super-aggressive bugs. It's packed with bloody action and CGI that has held up surprisingly well, but it was a box-office disappointment. However, over the decades, it became...

Beta Cinema has added Andres Veiel’s upcoming documentary film “Riefenstahl,” about controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, to its Cannes lineup.

The film is an exploration of Riefenstahl’s legacy, delving deep into her complex relationship with the Nazi regime. With unprecedented access to Riefenstahl’s 700-box personal archive, the documentary navigates between her sanitized narrative and incriminating evidence regarding her knowledge of the regime’s atrocities.

Veiel is a multi-award-winning writer and director of both narrative feature films and documentaries. His documentary about the aftermath of the Raf campaign of terror, “Black Box Germany,” was honored with the German Film Award and the European Film Award in 2002. In 2011, he presented the feature film “If Not Us, Who?” in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, winning the Alfred Bauer Award. The film was also nominated for five German Film Awards and brought Sevilla’s best actor award to August Diehl for his leading performance.

In the "Star Trek" episode "Patterns of Force", Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) visit the pre-warp planet of Ekos to find out what happened to John Gill (David Brian), an old history professor of Kirk's. Ekos, they find, has been culturally contaminated by Gill, as he taught them all about Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and the Ekosians have rearranged their society to match. They wear Nazi uniforms, praise John Gill as their Führer, and plan to exterminate their peaceful neighbor planet Zeon. The Zeon characters have names like Izak and Abrom.

There is also a secret resistance that Kirk and Spock can hide out with, and they eventually find a way to confront John Gill. Gill, they find, has been propped up by one of the more zealously Nazi Ekosians, and has been kept in line with drugs. Gill admits that he landed on Ekos finding it to be disorganized and chaotic,...

Hollywood, with its lengthy list of Jewish founders, flourished during an era of rampant antisemitism. In recent years, the Anti-Defamation League has said anti-Jewish sentiment has hit levels unseen since after the Great Depression, a time when Jewish studio moguls had difficulty securing bank loans as many lenders would not work with Jews. Now, in Los Angeles specifically, an Adl report (released months before the Israel-Hamas conflict) found harassment and vandalism increasing to highs.

On Nov. 8, the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance hosted a screening of footage produced by Hamas to brag about murdering Jews. During the screening, the head of the Museum of Tolerance, Rabbi Marvin Hier, reminded viewers that if not for atrocities like the one on Oct. 7, the Jewish global population should be 200 million today, but “there are only 14 million because we are the leftovers of pogroms.” The screening, organized in part by Gal Gadot, saw protestors...

Here they come again, those holiday perennials. Movies, both good and bad, that year after year find their way back into theaters, onto small screens and deep into stockings that still get stuffed with digital discs.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A Christmas Story. Love Actually. It’s a Wonderful Life, of course. A Christmas Carol, ad infinitum. Nutcracker after Nutcracker after Nutcracker.

My personal favorite, released 19 years ago, on Nov. 10, 2004, by Warner Bros., is The Polar Express from the technophile director Robert Zemeckis.

This isn’t a sentimental choice, at least not in the conventional sense. It’s just that every time the picture pops up—and its seasonal DVDs are strung merrily across the Internet, from Amazon to Target—it reminds me of an important life lesson. That is: It’s much easier not to be an editor, especially at The New York Times.