In-depth analysis of the controversial life and work of filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), who worked for the Nazis. Is her aesthetic separate from the underlying message, as she herself claimed? 

Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), certainly to a contemporary audience, is by far the best-known director who worked on behalf of the Nazis. She owes her continuing fame to the cinematic bravura of such innovative, still-influential propaganda documentaries as Triumph des Willens (about the Party Day in Nuremberg, 1934) and Olympia (about the Berlin Games, 1936). Perhaps equally notorious is the tenacity with which she claimed her historical innocence - and that of her aesthetic.

Yes, she was impressed by Hitler, but had merely seized an opportunity to use her talents. For his fascinating portrait, Andres Veiel, eminent chronicler of recent German history, had access for the first time to a wealth of private material from the estate of Riefenstahl and her forty-year younger partner Horst Kettner. It did not make him any milder. More than in previous films about her, it becomes clear how much Riefenstahl - wallowing in self-righteous victimhood - wanted to be seen in a favorable light. Above all, Veiel shows that Riefenstahl could not have been ignorant of the cruel fate of collaborators and extras.