00:00La cosa più interessante del film secondo me è il lavoro di ricerca.
00:06Qual è stato il criterio di scelta nell'immensa mole di materiale che avete trovato?
00:12First of all the question regarding the research was what is new?
00:18What I don't know yet and meaning to go very deep into the footage, into the findings of let's say 50,000 photos.
00:30Of course there were many of these photos never published and where do we get a deeper insight into her character,
00:39into her biography, into a story of somebody who became a fascist when she was 30 something.
00:47But you can follow up the roots why she became a fascist, the genesis of becoming a fascist.
00:55And you find many traces in her childhood regarding the violence of her father, regarding a very strict education.
01:06She was thrown into the water and then learned swimming.
01:10But she was drowning in fact.
01:12So I don't want to discharge her, to exonerate her or even apologize her by looking she had a hard fate.
01:23But I think the understanding for me was so necessary to find a very intimate approach.
01:30to find an insight of a character who became the most effective propagandist of a Nazi regime.
01:40And the escape was a treasure box.
01:42From a personal perspective, how did you approach yourself to a character who became the most negative appearance and
01:52find a sense, a motivation?
01:56Not a excuse, but a motivation.
01:58First of all, it was like a very hard digging into a person which I personally don't like.
02:07This is always a challenge because I like people to make films on people whom I love, who inspire me.
02:15And the challenge was in fact, she was somebody who was not inspiring me at all.
02:23Because all of her sermon, the repetition of her legends, it didn't gave me so much.
02:30But the challenging point and the reward, the reward in fact was to look behind the moral question of lies.
02:40To see what is the necessity of somebody who creates legends.
02:46And this is a very topic issue.
02:50You can look at politicians, you can look at people all over who recreate their legends, their truth, which is a lie.
03:03But people have a necessity to follow these lies.
03:06And these lies became a truth in the very end.
03:10And so Riefenstahl helps me to understand the pressure, the presence, much better than anybody else.
03:18It's a magnifier of reality.
03:20It's in a way Riefenstahl speaks to us from the future.
03:25The film has had a very long gestation.
03:28I'm referring to the last thing she said about the fact that this story speaks to the present.
03:34How has the film changed in the course of time?
03:37Especially related to what happened in the world, in Europe, in the Mediterranean, in the last year?
03:45First of all, I considered, from the beginning, I thought she was just opportunistic.
03:53And she wanted to make the films.
03:57It doesn't matter if for Hitler or for Stalin.
04:00But then I discovered something in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 80s.
04:12So the post-war period that she still remained with the ideology of the Nazi period.
04:23When you look at the photos of the new bar, they are celebrating the strong, young, erotic women and men.
04:33And you don't see sick people.
04:37You don't see people close to death.
04:41So the ideology of fascism was present.
04:47And she was convinced to celebrate these elements of the fascist aesthetic.
04:54And the interesting point behind, and that makes it so present,
04:59it's the contempt of the weak, of the sickness of people who are strange and foreigners.
05:07And that's the dangerous, the dark part of this, the ideology.
05:13And for me, Riefenstahl is in the continuity, in the permanence of the aesthetic so dangerous.
05:23Because when you look to Russia, when you look at the parades in Moscow,
05:29you have Putin, low ankle shots.
05:32You have the soldiers willing to fight.
05:35And you have a Trump who says,
05:39listen, migrants are spoiling, are destroying the American blood.
05:44It's a fascist ideologist.
05:46And so to see how present all these elements of Riefenstahl are today in the media,
05:55and nobody or I, many people are not questioning it anymore.
06:01And they just have a longing for this ideology.
06:05And this is scaring for me.
06:08So Riefenstahl is a role model or even a magnifier of the necessity of the longing for a fascist ideology.
06:15And it's more and more common all over.
06:19You are in the right place now.
06:21Yeah.
06:22The film comes at the right moment.
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