Democracy is on the decline across the globe, with the rise of populist leaders who attack minority groups and the institutions that function as a check and balance. This worrying creep towards fascism is front of mind when watching Riefenstahl, Andres Veiel's astonishing documentary drawn from the vast personal archives of infamous German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Screening this month in the German Film Festival, Riefenstahl traces how the director and star of The Blue Light caught the attention of an ascendant Adolf Hitler in 1932. Riefenstahl would go on to shoot two Nazi party propaganda films — 1933's Victory of the Faith and 1935's even more notorious Triumph of the Will — at their annual Nuremberg rally. She would later claim, filmed while watching back Will, enraptured, that its only message is "peace". A further commission to cover the Nazi-run 1936 Berlin Olympics resulted in 1938's two-part Olympia. Describing herself as having been "captured as if by a magnetic force" by the Führer, she was also close with other Nazi leaders, including Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer. Riefenstahl nevertheless maintained her supposed ignorance of their crimes throughout her 101-year lifetime. "When you listen to her interviews, it's like a sermon," Veiel says. "She'll say, 'I was just an artist. I wasn't interested in politics.'" Riefenstahl allows the filmmaker enough rope, posthumously, to condemn herself. "The interesting question for me was not that she's a liar, because this is obvious," Veiel says. "But when does she use what kind of lies?" Preaching to the unconverted Veiel, now 65, first saw Triumph of the Will when he was 18. "I was somehow disappointed, because it's boring," he laughs. "There are some mesmerising shots, but two-thirds of it is stupid marching people like robots. Even Goebbels thought it was too long." Veiel was intrigued to discover why it once held so much power. Supported by producer Sandra Maischberger — a famous German journalist who interviewed Riefenstahl but felt she had failed to crack her — Veiel and his team of researchers and editors were allowed unprecedented access to Riefenstahl's archive. Donated to the state, with no surviving relatives, it amounts to 700 often unorganised boxes. "I had doubts if I wanted to deal with this woman for two or three years, but I felt it was important to understand the current form of fascism," Veiel says. Diligent work began to uncover Riefenstahl's shifting narrative. "She used to say she was an eyewitness [to atrocities in Poland]. Then she had the denazification trial [after the war] and says, 'I was far away. I just heard some shots.' She insists she never heard about the Holocaust until after the war." But then there is the shocking revelation contained in a Nazi functionary's letter, reporting on an incident from the set of her film Lowlands. Released in 1954 but shot in the early 40s during World War II, the dramatic feature has Riefenstahl as both director and starring as a dancer — her original career. It's revealed she hand-picked Sinti and Roma prisoners from Salzburg's Maxglan-Leopoldskron camp as extras. Most of those prisoners later perished in Auschwitz. Bad influencer Understanding the nature of the beast is vital, Veiel suggests, in terrifying times, with the far-right literally on the march in Australia, Germany, the US and more. "The challenge for me was not just to stage a tribunal, but to understand why Riefenstahl became what she was: the prototype fascist that's very current," Veiel says. "You have scapegoating, the separation of 'us' and 'them' and how this separation led first to the humiliation of others," he says. "Then to exclude them, step by step, to dehumanise specific groups. And, in the very end, give permission to kill them." Ironically enough, Riefenstahl debuted at the Venice Film Festival, where her two propaganda films were also once feted. "What with [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni and her fascist roots, I thought it's the right place to build a bridge into the present." Veiel says it's important to be vigilant of the media's role in massaging the messaging of would-be demagogues, in "supporting a longing for these so-called values in a very simplistic way, this celebration of strongness [sic] and the contempt of weakness". Long before social media, Riefenstahl understood how to harness her image. "She's a role model for fabrication or fake news," Veiel says. It's telling how, in archival interviews, Riefenstahl appears to freeze, then crumple when faced with the truth. She's also prone to flying into a fury. But how much of her narrative — massaged at length for her best-selling memoir, with advice from Speer, no less — did she believe? "You can see how, in the beginning, she's rehearsing the line," Veiel says. "Later, the lie becomes a new truth. First, she tries to sell it with charm, using all her tools as an actress, then she gets aggressive." Revelation after revelation, Riefenstahl pulls back the curtain, ending with a devastating line from a taped personal conversation, leaving little room for doubt. But perhaps the most galling aspect of what is, from start to finish, a searing documentary is just how often Riefenstahl attempts to frame herself as the victim. Long claiming she spent four years in a prison camp after the war, the truth is much stranger. "American troops arrested her, and she was kept in a hotel for four weeks," Veiel says. "But within a week, she was allowed to go to the casino." The denazification trial cleared her, even going so far as to argue, incomprehensibly, that Triumph of the Will was not a propaganda film. "All the Nazi victims had to fight to get a very low compensation of 500 euros or something, while Leni and Speer were paid a lot to be interviewed," Veiel says. "And yet she considered herself as being pursued like a witch. It's really bitter." The German Film Festival runs throughout May.