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Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) is a propaganda film by the German
filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. It
is perhaps the best-known such film in the history of the cinema, with wide and enduring recognition of the technical skills of
Riefenstahl despite the equally wide revulsion towards its subject.
The film shows much footage of Nazi soldiers marching to melodious major-keyed classical music,
then later singing, playing, and cooking; it also includes soundbites from
speeches given by various advisors to Adolf Hitler, and portions of a
speech by Hitler himself. The film tries to show how the German people pledged their loyalty to the person of Hitler, but becomes
somewhat disorienting when Hitler is praised as an "epitome of altruism" and later
informs the assembled thousands that he is on a God-given mission.
For this film Riefenstahl was awarded with the gold medal at the World Exhibition 1937 in Paris.
The film is banned in the Federal Republic of Germany.
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