The Olympic Dream: The 1936 Nazi Games

Never before had the Olympics been this elaborate, never before had the production been this pompous, never before had the games been this controversial. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin marked a changing point. Sports and politics, two spheres that ideally do not mix, mutated into a gigantic symbiosis. The world's sporting competition became a Nazi propaganda show. Planned and meticulously executed with military precision. In both their development and their staging the 1936 Olympic Games were a metaphor for life in the Third Reich. On the one side was Germany, which saw itself as youthful and new and which impressed and dazzled itself as well as many visitors with the elation of shared success, the achievability and its own strengths. On the other side were those who did not fit in and were not allowed to be a part of the event, who were excluded (and later eliminated). The regime desired that this fundamental principle – placing the participants on a pedestal and excluding the outcasts – was to exist for the 1936 Games too, despite it going completely against the Olympic spirit. It was a fundamental contradiction that confronted the games' organizers and participants with deep conflicts and decisions. The Film revises the traditional image of the 1936 Olympic Games, which were decisively shaped by Leni Riefenstahl's pompous Nazi aesthetic. Instead, the event is firmly recounted from the inside perspective – from the views of the people who participated in those Games. (texte officiel du distributeur)