What do you do when your last name is that of a man synonymous with anti-Semitic propaganda? Do you change your name? Do you lash back at accusers and proclaim your ancestor a misunderstood artist too naïve to be guilty? Do you battle in causes diametrically opposed to that legacy, as a way of expunging the stain? Do you live quietly, aware that it was not your fault but unable to stem the tide of guilt? With the far-flung family of German filmmaker Veit Harlan, a favorite of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and director of the still-banned 1940 hate film Jew Süss, their reactions cover all of the above. Felix Moeller's studious and inquisitive documentary, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss, investigates the man behind the film and the disquieting legacy he left behind. What it discovers is that the Nazi totalitarian experiment reverberates strongly today in generations far removed from its immediate effects, and among those who did not even directly suffer as a result of it. A purveyor of weepy, gloomy melodramas and scenes of mass pageantry, Harlan's apotheosis as a wartime Nazi director came with Jew Süss. A sleazy cobbling together of anti-Semitic canards in the form of a historical drama, the film was a tool to winding up audiences for a lynching. It's Germany's Birth of a Nation. Harlan's most vocal son, Thomas, correctly terms the film a "murder instrument." Although Harlan is less remembered today than his fellow traveler Leni Riefenstahl, during the war he was the Third Reich's most popular director. After the war, while Riefenstahl always haughtily denied that fascist epics like Triumph of the Will could be seen as anything but pure artistry, Harlan protested that he was forced into it by Goebbels. The broad swath of descendents interviewed by Moeller mostly believe that to be a lie. The Harlan that comes out of this film is a vain and ambitious artiste who would do anything to get ahead, even if that meant using Jews from the Prague ghetto (many of whom likely died because of the ideology he was glorifying) as extras in Jew Süss. Protestations from family members that Harlan had "many" Jewish friends seem weak indeed when compared to his record. Even the fact that he was twice acquitted of crimes against humanity in postwar trials becomes suspect once one considers that the judge in both cases had, during the war, ordered a Ukrainian woman beheaded for stealing a headscarf. To its credit, Moeller's film looks beyond just the question of Harlan's beliefs. It grapples forthrightly with the problematic issue of how his family should deal with their infamous namesake. Many reactions are unsurprising, particularly those defensively claiming he didn't realize what he was doing, or who just changed their names. But some are more complicated, like his son Thomas. A bear of a man with an expansive manner, Thomas appears here as the wicked son, the one who turned against his father so violently that he became an anarchist, Nazi-hunter, and even tried to burn down theaters where Harlan's films were playing. Particularly fascinating is Harlan's granddaughter Jessica Jacoby, whose incisive takes on his work are given dimensionality by being half-Jewish. Completing the circle in a curious sort of way is Harlan's niece, Christiane, widow of Jewish director Stanley Kubrick, who toyed with the idea of making a film about a director like Harlan. Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss doesn't spend time denouncing its subject, preferring to let the numerous clips of his films and his children's devastating rhetoric do that job. It shows also that while art can quickly fade (Harlan's work today feels like a pastiche of archaic histrionics), guilt can last for untold generations. Aka Harlan – Im Schatten von Jud Süss.