Margaret Menegoz, director of the French production company Les Films du Losange, which produced films by Michael Hanke, Wim Wenders and Éric Rohmer, among others, has died at the age of 83.
The company released a statement confirming Menegoz’s death in Montpellier on August 7. It cited her “love of cinema and work, and her loyalty to her filmmakers that became the hallmark of Les Films du Losange,” describing Menegoz as “open-minded towards Europe and the international scene, which she particularly cherished.”
Menegoz ran Les Films du Losange for nearly 50 years, taking over the company in 1973. She produced more than 60 films, including Haneke’s Pilgrim’s Progress Love, The white ribbon And HiddenWenders’ 1977 feature film The American Friendby Volker Schlöndorff Swann in love (1984), Agnieszka Holland EuropeEurope (1990), Rohmer A Spring Tale (1990) and A Winter’s Tale (1992), among many others.
Love received 5 Oscar nominations in 2013, including a nomination for Menegoz in the Best Feature Film category. It won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. The white ribbon has won two Oscar nominations.
The Franco-German film producer was born in Hungary in 1941 but was expelled from the country with her family, of German origin, following the siege of Budapest in 1945. She grew up in Germany. Menegoz joined Les Films du Losange in 1975, the company founded by Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder in 1962. She was first hired as an assistant on Rohmer’s 1976 German-language film Marquise of Owith Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz. Schroeder was busy preparing his 1975 feature film MistressMenegoz came to run the company and stayed.
During her long career at Films du Losange, Menegoz worked with a generation of influential European auteurs, from Wenders, Rohmer and Haneke to Andrzej Wajda, Lars Von Trier, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She began her collaboration with Austrian director Haneke on his 2001 feature film The piano teacher, and produced all of his subsequent feature films in German and French, including Lovewith Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert; and, more recently, Happy endingwith also Huppert.
In 1986, Menegoz launched a theatrical distribution company, Les Films du Losange, and an international sales division in the early 1990s. In 2021, she organized the sale of the company to Alexis Dantec and Charles Gillibert, thus ensuring the sustainability of the prestigious company.
Menegoz was also a tireless promoter of French cinema and chaired the export organization Unifrance as its president, taking over after the sudden death of her predecessor and friend Daniel Toscan du Plantier at the Berlin Film Festival in 2003. She remained in this position until 2009.
“Margaret didn’t work internationally, she embodied it,” said Daniela Elstner, current CEO of Unifrance, who began her career in international sales…
