Harlan - In the Shadow of the Jew Suess

The documentary presents the first biography of Veit Harlan with numerous film extracts and previously unreleased film material from the private family archive. It also shows how Veit Harlan’s family - including the youngest generation - still struggles today with the dark myth of artistic immorality. Veit Harlan was Nazi Germany’s most successful film director. A hundred million spectators saw his films all over Europe, including the perfidious anti-Semitic propaganda film The Jew Suess. Equally obsessive as he was gifted, Harlan is without a doubt Nazi cinema’s most equivocal figure, together with Leni Riefenstahl. A master of national kitsch, exultations of death and melodrama, he was an artist as blinded as he was talented. With his monumental film Kolberg, released in 1945, he produced the major enduring epic of a declining regime. To this day, many remain fascinated by the driven, crafted aesthetics and darkly seductive power of Harlan’s films