Brave, decisive, irresistibly beautiful, like the Queen of the Nibelungs from the ancient German epic, Leni Riefenstahl burst into the elite of world cinema, like a bright actress and director-operator of the documentaries Triumph of Will and Olympia, shot with the approval and under the patronage of Adolf Hitler himself. In these tapes, she managed with the talent and passion of an outstanding artist to convey the spirit of the era of an unprecedented rise, a powerful cohesion of pre-war Germany. These films instantly brought Leni worldwide fame, but, like all the best created by the German nation, Riefenstahl's fame was trampled into the mud, erased into dust under the iron tread of the legions of the Third Reich.