Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, who was forever tainted by working with the Nazis, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.

A deep dive into Leni Reifenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.

Veiel, who was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films – who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016 – is untroubled by the film’s out-of-competition berth as he believes the festival is the right venue for its first showing.

“For me, it is the right festival for the film,” Veiel tells Variety. “The political situation in German and Italy is similar – with the rise of the right-wing, and a longing for propaganda and fake news. For a debate about the film, it is one of the best festivals for us.”

There are also ghosts of the past in Venice – Riefenstahl screened several of her films at the festival in the 1930s, including her two Nazi propaganda films, and her first feature “The Blue Light,” made in 1932. She even had a retrospective on the Lido in the 1950s, at a time when she was just beginning to construct a persona distanced from the Nazis, and – as “Riefenstahl” shows – largely built on lies.

Although not an easy film to watch – as Veiel succeeds in proving her apparent complicity in the murder of Jewish men in Poland and admiration for Hitler – “Riefenstahl” is likely to prove a hot ticket in Venice.

Another much-anticipated film, Tim Fehlbaum’s Munich summer 1972 Olympics feature “September 5,” is playing in the Horizons Extra competition section. Starring Peter Sarsgaard and John Magaro, and revolving around the sports reporting team of U.S. broadcaster ABC, who have to switch from covering track and field events to the Israeli athletes’ hostage crisis, it focuses on how tragic events can also challenge the moral compass of journalists covering them.

In Horizons, Scandar Copti’s “Happy Holidays” tells the story of a Palestinian woman whose double life is revealed after a car accident in Jerusalem, and “Quiet Life,” directed by Alexandros Avranas, focuses on a family of asylum seekers whose hopes of creating a new life in Sweden are dashed when their application is rejected.

Two German co-productions are screening in the main competition – Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “Harvest,” adapted from the prize-winning book of the same name about an unnamed English village that seems to exist in neither time nor place – before it disappears for ever. There is also the Italian-German-U.S. co-production, “Maria” by Pablo Larrain, which tells the story of opera singer Maria Callas.

Looking further ahead, German films are also heading to the Toronto Film Festival.

Key films in the lineup there include Fabian Stumm’s sophomore film “Sad Jokes” playing as an international premiere in the festival’s Discovery section. It focuses on the relationship between Joseph and Sonya – who are raising a son together although their relationship is platonic. Things go awry when Sonya has a breakdown, tearing Joseph’s attention away from a new film project – and the pain of a break-up with his ex-boyfriend, Marc.

Others already announced include “Edge of Night” by Türker Süer; “Seven Days” by Amil Samadi Ahadi, and “The Sunset Special 2” by Nicolas Gebbe.

Oasis fans seeking tickets to the band’s reunion tour have had to endure hour long waits, and in some cases disappointment, as online platforms have been strained under demand from hundreds of thousands of fans.

The Britpop-era behemoth led by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher is scheduled to play 17 gigs — its first shows for 15 years — in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin starting July 4 next year.

More than one million tickets went on sale Saturday morning, with prices starting at about 74 pounds (just under $100).

But some people attempting to get onto the handful of authorised sales sites, including Ticketmaster and Gigs and Tours, received error messages, while many others were informed they were in a lengthy queue.

Josh Jeffery, a videographer who lives near Edinburgh, spent hours moving up the online ticket queue, before “the whole site collapsed” at the last step.

“I’ve given up, my friends have given up,” Jeffery, who first saw Oasis in Manchester as a teenager in 1996, told The Associated Press news agency. “We just decided it’s too much hassle.

“As I was in the queue, I heard Wonderwall blasting out from my neighbour’s house,” he added ruefully. “He’d obviously got tickets.”

Some fans managed to buy tickets through a presale lottery on Friday.

Barista Isabelle Doyle told the AP she was “over the moon” after snagging two seats for one of the band’s London shows.

“I’ve been a fan of Oasis for about 10 years now, literally since I was 11 years old,” the 21-year-old said. “Finally to be able to see them after they got me through as a teenager, it’s absolutely amazing and I’m so excited.”

Within hours, tickets began to be offered on resale websites for as much as 6,000 pounds ($7,800).

Oasis issued a warning, saying tickets could only be resold at face value through authorised sites.

“Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters,” it said in a statement.

Fans are not just trying to get into the shows.

Cheap hotel rooms also appear to have been replaced by pricier options on travel sites in the reunion tour host cities like Manchester.

Some people reported on social media that hotels had sought to cancel bookings they had made prior to the tour dates being announced, in a bid to relist them at a higher price.

The gigs are expected to provide a multimillion-pound boost for Britain’s hospitality sector and economy.

“There will be huge sums of money spent on merchandise, travel, hotels, bars and restaurants, as well as creating jobs which are all linked directly to these gigs,” Paul Haywood-Schiefer, senior manager at tax advisory firm Blick Rothenberg, told the Reuters news agency.

Although Oasis, one of the biggest British bands of recent decades, said plans were under way to go to other continents, fans were likely to fly in from abroad for the British shows.

“If you want to see Oasis, really the best place to do it is here in the UK where they mean so much,” Sutherland said.

Formed in Manchester in 1991, Oasis was one of the dominant British acts of the 1990s, producing hits including Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger. Its sound was fuelled by singalong rock choruses and the combustible chemistry between guitarist-songwriter Noel Gallagher and singer sibling Liam.

Oasis split in 2009, with Noel Gallagher quitting the band after a backstage dustup with his brother at a festival near Paris. While the Gallagher brothers, now aged 57 and 51, have not performed together since, both regularly perform Oasis songs at their solo gigs. They have also each fired off criticisms of the other in the press.

Announcing the reunion, the band said fans would experience “the spark and intensity” that occurs only when they appear on stage together.

MAUMERE, Indonesia (AP) — Arnoldus Yansen thought for certain he was going to become a Catholic priest, just like his older brother, cousin and uncle.

He attended St. Peter Major Seminary, a bastion of priestly vocations located in the middle of a jungle on Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in Muslim-majority Indonesia. Known familiarly as Ritapiret Seminary, St. Peter Major has produced 13 bishops, more than 580 diocesan priests and 23 deacons in nearly 70 years of existence.

But Yansen won’t be among them. He tried to shake off what he thought were last-minute jitters before entering the priesthood. Instead, Yansen took off his clerical robes for good and joined the hundreds of prospective priests who resign or fail to take up Catholic vocations every year in Indonesia.

“I felt like I didn’t fit in anymore and that I would be able to do more if I left,” said Yansen, 26, who is now an administrator at a Catholic school, Ledalero Institute of Philosophy and Creative Technology.

Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Indonesia is putting a spotlight on the 8.6 million Catholics who make up 3% of the population. It’s a country where religious minorities remain on edge due to militant attacks that have targeted faith groups.

More men are entering seminary, but Yansen and others like him show that Indonesia is not immune from trends contributing to the Catholic Church’s global priest shortage, including fallout from the clergy sex abuse crisis and the pull of the fast-paced modern world.

“The number of priests is never enough,” said the Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga, rector of St. Peter Major Seminary, which is considered the largest Catholic seminary in the world by enrollment.

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In Indonesia, there 2,466 diocesan priests in Indonesia in 2022, up from 2,203 in 2017, according to Vatican statistics as of Dec. 31, 2022, the last year for which data is available. That number is supplemented by even more religious order priests, such as Jesuits or Franciscans, whose numbers reached 3,437 in 2022.

But Tanga noted that Indonesia’s population growth is outpacing priesthood vocations. “We will continue to face a shortage of priests in the future if nothing is done now.”

Asia, along with Africa, has long been seen as the future of the Catholic Church, both in terms of the number of baptized faithful and the number of men and women who decide to become priests or nuns.

The Philippines and India outpace Indonesia. But compared to all of Asia, the number of seminarians in Indonesia is growing while it levels off or declines across the continent.

While the Catholic Church is faced with priest-less parishes in many parts of the world, Ritapiret Seminary is overwhelmed with applicants.

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Men training to be diocesan priests typically spend six to eight years in the seminary, and two years of pastoral work, before ordination. Less than 20 seminarians can be ordained each year, Tanga said.

“To answer God’s calling and to choose a life as (a) priest remain something fascinating for people in this region,” Tanga said. “And yet we still appeal (to) youths to have courage to make a decision to take up church vocation, and the support from their families and society.”

He knows monastic life isn’t for everyone. Some consider taking up a vocation to be too dull when compared to more modern ways of life.

Tanga said seminaries are now being challenged to brand and promote themselves to encourage young people to become priests. The school with 62 lecturers — more than half of whom are priests — is now a college where the public can study digital technology, economics, and how to become Catholic religion teachers.

During Pope John Paul II’s visit to Indonesia in 1989, he hailed the faithfulness of people in Flores and the flourishing number of priests and nuns. He praised the seminarians in Ritapiret, saying: “You must also understand that faithful service to Christ and his Church will not always earn you the world’s praise. On the contrary, you will sometimes receive the same treatment as the Lord: rejection, contempt, and even persecution.”

Now a saint, the room he spent the night in at the seminary has become a spiritual tourism destination.

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Inosentius Mansur, who is on the seminary staff, said their data shows that the Catholic priest shortage is not caused by a loss of resources, but by a “loss of moral commitment.”

Sex abuse scandals and other unflattering news reports emerging from the Vatican and elsewhere contributed to Yansen’s decision to leave the path to priesthood, he said.

Beyond the internal challenges, violent attacks are also a concern of the church in Indonesia. Although the country promotes itself as a bastion of tolerance in the Muslim world, a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years.

In 2021, a militant couple blew themselves up outside a packed Catholic cathedral on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island during a Palm Sunday Mass, wounding at least 20 people.

Bishop Siprianus Hormat of Ruteng said he still believes that most Indonesians are tolerant unless something triggers a conflict, and that the country has a pluralist society that respects freedom of religion.

“In general, acts or behaviors of intolerance are still there, but on a small scale,” Hormat said. “This is actually not a problem that is purely related to religious issue, but it was used to fuel people’s anger to oppress their political rivals or those who don’t agree with them.”

Though religious freedom is protected by Indonesia’s constitution, members of religious minorities and atheists have been increasingly subjected to discrimination.

“Diversity of Indonesia is a reality that we cannot deny,” Hormat said. “We cannot tolerate any actions that aim to eliminate certain religion or race from this country.”

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The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its annual report in January that blasphemy allegations and convictions remain persistent religious freedom violations throughout Indonesia.

The report said a new criminal code that will be implemented in 2026 will further criminalize blasphemy and expand on other violations. There also are concerns about local government initiatives to codify discrimination against minority communities gaining traction. In some schools, there are religious clothing mandates, including wearing a hijab, even for non-Muslim girls.

“We believe in what Jesus said, that even though this world ends, my kingdom there will be no end,” said Tanga, the seminary’s rector, adding that the Catholic Church, though it has been through crises before, “will never become extinct.”

“It means the vocations to become a priest and dedication to the service of Christ and his church will never wane,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.