‘The Girl With The Leica’ Review: An Impressionistic Portrait of Gerda Taro, the Woman Who Shared the Artistic Identity of Robert Capa

The opening film of Venice’s Horizons section provides a fitting requiem for the first female photojournalist to die on the battlefield. 

By Alissa Simon

Alissa Simon

Film Critic

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For many people, the name Robert Capa evokes a mysterious, jet-setting American photographer responsible for some of the mid-20th century’s most iconic images from the frontlines of war. In the fascinating “The Girl With The Leica,” Italian director Alina Marazzi puts paid to that myth. The time-jumping film reclaims the legacy of German-born photojournalist Gerda Taro (née Gerta Pohorylle) and illuminates her contributions to the invention of Capa, an alias embodied by the charismatic Hungarian shutterbug born Endre Erno Friedmann, aka André Friedmann. As scholars now know, Capa’s early oeuvre encompassed works by both him and Taro. The engrossing “Leica” serves as the opening to the Venice Horizons section and should have a strong festival and ancillary career.

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