
Directing
Leni Riefenstahl
Born 1902-08-22 · Berlin, Germany
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party. Riefenstahl's prominence in the Third Reich along with her personal friendship with Adolf Hitler thwarted her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges. Triumph of the Will gave Riefenstahl instant and lasting international fame, as well as infamy. Although she directed only eight films, just two of which received significant coverage outside of Germany, Riefenstahl was widely known all her life. The propaganda value of her films made during the 1930s repels most modern commentators but many film histories cite the aesthetics as outstanding. The Economist wrote that Triumph of the Will "sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century". In the 1970s Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Sudan in several books such as The Last of the Nuba. She was active up until her death and also published marine life stills and released the marine-based film Impressionen unter Wasser in 2002. After her death, the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an "acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques". Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin noted, "Leni Riefenstahl conquered new ground in the cinema". The BBC said her documentaries "were hailed as groundbreaking film-making, pioneering techniques involving cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time". Description above from the Wikipedia article Leni Riefenstahl, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Acting credits
7.2Explores 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.
Riefenstahl
2024
The forgotten story of Son Kee Chung, the Korean athlete who won a gold medal under Japanese flag in marathon at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
The Run
2016
6.4The Nazi propaganda mastermind behind Hitler speaks in first person as actor Kenneth Branagh reads pages of the diary kept by the chief of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, revealing the man's most inner thoughts.
The Goebbels Experiment
2005
The play is an atypical story about Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's court director, one of the best filmmakers in the world, who rose to fame thanks to films commissioned by the Third Reich. The character of Leni was portrayed by Zdena Studénková in the drama of the Slovak National Theatre. The original Slovak play Leni by Valerie Schulczová and Roman Olekšák is about a fictional meeting of two real people. The legendary presenter Johnny Carson, whose "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" was one of the most watched talk shows in America for thirty years, and the controversial Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's "court director". It's 1974, Johnny is at the height of his career, and Leni is in America presenting her first completed project since the defeat of Germany - a book of photographs from Africa - Last of Nubu. But Johnny knows what his audience is more interested in than art.
LENI
2015
10.0A fascinating chronology of 100 years of mountain film history in the Alps. This documentary focuses primarily on films shot on the Matterhorn, the Eiger, and the Grandes Jorasses, considered until the 1930s as the "last problems of the Alps," and shows the evolution of mountain filmmaking through numerous excerpts from documentaries and feature films – notably on the Matterhorn in 1901. The genre, appropriated as a means of mass exaltation by "fascist" regimes during the Second World War, was reinvented in the 1950s by Gaston Rebuffat, Marcel Ichac, and Lionel Terray in the Mont Blanc massif, avant-garde figures of French mountain cinema, who reintroduced, beyond performance, the values of the mountains – and in color – poetry, humor, and sharing among people from all walks of life.
Faszination Bergfilm - Himmelhoch und Abgrundtief
2008
7.0Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.
Birth of a Nation
1997
6.9Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
1938
6.5Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
Hitler's Hollywood
2017
7.0Dr. Johannes Krafft climbs a 12,000-foot mountain over and over again to search for his wife, who was lost on their honeymoon. Another couple makes the dangerous climb with him.
The White Hell of Pitz Palu
1929
6.9As sole female Junta is the only one who can climb a dangerous mountain, villagers deem her as a witch.
The Blue Light
1932
NRThis film is about the responsibility of artists and art that can lead to genocide.
In the Service of the Regime. Leni Riefenstahl
2009
6.5In the mountains, Diotima meets Karl and fall in love and have an affair. Karl's friend Vigo mistakenly believes she's in love with him, causing rifts in all relationships.
The Holy Mountain
1926
5.6The exploits of village girl Hannes and her attempts to master skiing and ski-jumping aided by the local expert.
The White Ecstasy
1931
7.3Winston Churchill understood the power of films, but the true extent of his use of cinema as a propaganda tool is rarely explored. In 1934, one of Britain's most celebrated film producers, Alexander Korda, signed Churchill up as a screenwriter and historical advisor. It was the start of a unique collaboration. Churchill provided script notes for Korda's productions and penned an epic screenplay. When war broke out, their collaboration took on national importance. Korda was sent on a mission to Hollywood to help bring America into the war, with positive results. With access to previously undiscovered documents, this film documentary examines that mission and a friendship that underpinned a unique, creative partnership.
Churchill and the Movie Mogul
2019
NRCity of Toys (2024, 39mins) combines Alan Marcus’ 2001 interview with legendary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl with an exploration of centuries of antisemitism. As she recalls of her iconic 1935 documentary, Triumph of the Will, on the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally almost seventy years later: “I had no ideals. I only did my duty. It was a commission I carried out.” Beyond its notoriety in 20th century history, Nuremberg was also known as one of the toymaking capitals of the world and until the Nazi era many of its major toymakers were Jewish. Nuremberg still hosts the world’s largest trade toy fair. The film subtly intertwines narratives on Adolf Hitler and Riefenstahl’s representation of the Nazi movement with Nuremberg’s historical bedrock of antisemitism and the role of its Jewish toymakers. As film historian Robert Rosenstone has written of Marcus’ work, “I would call it a kind of poetic history that may in fact deny the possibility of history at all.”
City of Toys
2024
8.0No synopsis available yet.
Das Schicksal derer von Habsburg
1928
10.0From Stag Beetle to Swastika narrates in a richly detailed, associative montage the boundless possibilities of manipulating images and using images to seduce.
From Stag Beetle to Swastika
2002
6.6Hannes is employed at the Mont Blanc Observatory; the only outside connection is a pilot and Hella over the radio. Hella ascends the mountain but her father dies along the way.
Storm Over Mont Blanc
1930
7.2This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.
The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
1993
An interview with infamous German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl carried out by Sandra Maischberger in preparation for the subject's 100th birthday, and the release of not only her final film, but her first film in 48 years.
The Immoderation of Me - Sandra Maischberger meets Leni Riefenstahl
2002
5.1A young Italian girl living in the Dolomites falls in love with a member of a tourist party skiing on the nearby mountains.
The Great Leap
1927
NRSix sequences about Fascism and its segments throughout history.
FASCISM(s): A Film in Six Parts
2025
NRThe film tells the cultural story of Berlin during the Weimar Republic through interviews with a number of persons who were involved in literature, film, art, and music during the period. It includes interviews with Christopher Isherwood, Louise Brooks, Lotte Eisner, Elisabeth Bergner, Francis Lederer, Carl Zuckmayer, Gregor Piatigorsky, Claudio Arrau, Rudolf Kolisch, Mischa Spoliansky, Herbert Bayer, Mrs. Walter Gropius, and Arthur Koestler.
Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture
1976
6.0At the age of 97 Riefenstahl returns to Sudan for one final farewell to the Nuba that she lived with for 8 months and photographed and filmed extensively. Müller documents her return after 23 years away and her reaction to the collapsing culture that she once celebrated so avidly in her photographs.
Leni Riefenstahl: Her Dream of Africa
2003
Behind the camera
6.9A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.
Triumph of the Will
1935
6.9A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.
Triumph of the Will
1935
6.9A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.
Triumph of the Will
1935
6.9Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
1938
6.9Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
1938
6.9Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
1938
6.7Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
1938
6.7Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
1938
6.7Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
1938
5.4Follows the Fifth Nazi Party Rally (Nuremberg, 30 August–3 September 1933) and shows the then close relationship between Adolf Hitler and Ernest Rõhm.
The Victory of Faith
1933
5.4Follows the Fifth Nazi Party Rally (Nuremberg, 30 August–3 September 1933) and shows the then close relationship between Adolf Hitler and Ernest Rõhm.
The Victory of Faith
1933
6.9As sole female Junta is the only one who can climb a dangerous mountain, villagers deem her as a witch.
The Blue Light
1932
6.9As sole female Junta is the only one who can climb a dangerous mountain, villagers deem her as a witch.
The Blue Light
1932
7.0The armed forces of the Third Reich, particularly the German army, are presented as an efficient system of bodies and machines at the seventh Nazi Party Rally that occurred in Nuremberg in 1935.
Day of Freedom
1935
7.0The armed forces of the Third Reich, particularly the German army, are presented as an efficient system of bodies and machines at the seventh Nazi Party Rally that occurred in Nuremberg in 1935.
Day of Freedom
1935
7.0Between 1963 and 1976, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl spent months living among in the Nuba people in the Kordofan Province of Sudan, documenting their cultural traditions as well as the everyday activities crucial to their very survival.
Longing For Innocence
2023
6.0In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.
Lowlands
1954
6.0In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.
Lowlands
1954
6.0In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.
Lowlands
1954
6.9Deep-sea diver/former propagandist Leni Riefenstahl explores the undersea world of coral reefs in various oceans around the world.
Underwater Impressions
2002
6.9Deep-sea diver/former propagandist Leni Riefenstahl explores the undersea world of coral reefs in various oceans around the world.
Underwater Impressions
2002