A documentary 40 years ago refuted Riefenstahl’s claim that nothing happened to the extras from “Tiefland” during the Nazi era. Why the broadcaster let the film disappear – and still doesn’t want to show it to this day.
It was 1940 in Germany, and Leni Riefenstahl was working on her film as lead actress, director and producer Lowland, an opera film adaptation about a shepherd from the Pyrenees and a dancer. “The outdoor filming of this film was carried out in the fall of 1940 and summer of 1941 in Krün near Mittenwald,” says a judgment from the Freiburg Regional Court, and: “Since the plot of the film took place in Spain, the plaintiff needed a larger number for her recordings southern-looking extras.”