Röhm

Powerful and resonant series that looks at how Hitler and the Nazis seized power in Germany and ushered in the death of democracy.

This first propaganda film of Leni Riefenstahl recounts the Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg from 30 August to 3 September 1933 and celebrates the victory of the Nazis in achieving power when Adolf Hitler assumed the role of Chancellor of Germany in February 1933. 'Der Sieg des Glaubens' is pure Nazi propaganda for the Nazi Party, which funded and promoted the film. The film is of great historic interest because it shows Hitler and the SA leader Ernst Röhm on close and intimate terms, before Röhm was shot on the orders of Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives on 1.

British director Bernard Rose clearly has a thing for those two 19th-century giants of music and literature Beethoven and Tolstoy. He turned out a Beethoven biopic, Immortal Beloved, back in 1994; made a period adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean) in 1997; and reworked Tolstoy’s story ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ in a contemporary setting for 1999’s ivans xtc. Now he brings his big passions together with The Kreutzer Sonata – a version of Tolstoy’s enigmatic 1889 novella, which was itself inspired by the eponymous Beethoven work.