Margaret Menegoz, who led iconic French film company Les Films du Losange for close to 50 years, producing the films of Éric Rohmer, Michael Haneke and Wim Wenders among others, has died at the age of 83.
The German and French film producer was born in Hungary in 1941. Her family, which was of German origin, was expelled from the country in the wake of the 1945 Siege of Budapest, and Menegoz grew up in Germany.
Menegoz entered the film industry as an editor and then connected with the French independent filmmaking scene via her documentarian husband Robert Menegoz, who she met at the Berlin Film Festival in the early 1970s.
She took the reins of Les Films du Losange in 1975, having been originally hired as an assistant on co-founder Rohmer’s 1976 German-language film Marquise Of O, co-starring Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz.
Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder had created the company in 1962, but with the former shooting Marquise of O and the latter busy with preparation on his 1975 feature Mistress, Ménégoz stepped in to hold the fort and stayed.
Menegoz would go on to work with a raft of groundbreaking European directors under the Les Films du Losange banner, also including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars Von Trier and Andrzej Wajda.
One of her most successful long-standing collaborations was with Austrian director Haneke, which began with the 2001 psychological erotic drama The Piano Teacher, and included the Palme d’Or and Oscar winning 2012 drama Amour, tackling the challenge of old age and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert.
Under Menegoz’s tenure, Les Films du Losange launched a theatrical distribution label in 1986, led by Régine Vial, and an international sales arm in the early 1990s.
On the cusp of her 80s, Ménégoz secured the future of Les Films du Losange with its sale in 2021 to Alexis Dantec and Charles Gillibert, who are continuing its legacy in the roles of managing director and president.
Today, the company boasts a catalogue of 325 arthouse titles that have marked European cinema by the likes of Rohmer, Schroeder, Haneke, Wenders and Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Eustache, Roger Planchon, Jean-Claude Brisseau, Romain Goupil, Jean-Marc Moutout and Jacques Doillon.
Alongside her work at Les Films du Losange, Menegoz also played a key role in the wider success of French cinema.
From 2003 to 2009, she was the president of cinema export body Unifrance, stepping into the role following the sudden death of predecessor and friend Daniel Toscan du Plantier at the Berlin Film Festival.
Current Unifrance managing director Daniela Elstner, who began her career in international sales at Les Films du Losange, paid tribute to Menegoz.
“Margaret didn’t work internationally, she embodied it,” she wrote in an Unifrance statement.
“Her productions will talk about her, her way of thinking and loving the world. She was an example for many young women. I was one of them; Margaret taught me everything in this world of cinema which knows no borders and invites us to think outside of limits… Thank you Margaret, we will miss you terribly.”
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