Margaret Menegoz, the head of French production company Les Films du Losange, who originated the movies of Michael Hanke, Wim Wfinishers and Éric Rohmer, among others, has died. She was 83.
The company rehired a statement validateing that Menegoz died in Montpellier on August 7. They cited her “cherish of films and labor, and her loyalty to her filmoriginaters that have become the halllabels of Les Films du Losange,” describing Menegoz as “uncover-minded towards Europe and the international scene, which she particularly treacertained.”
Menegoz led Les Films du Losange for seal to 50 years, taking over at the company in 1973. She originated more than 60 films, including Haneke’s Amour, The White Ribbon and Cache, Wfinishers’ 1977 feature The American Frifinish, Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love (1984), Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa (1990), Rohmer’s A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Tale of Winter (1992), among many others.
Amour achieved 5 Oscar nominations in 2013, including a nomination for Menegoz for best feature. It won for best international feature. The White Ribbon picked up two Oscar nominations.
The German and French film originater was born in Hungary in 1941 but was ejectled from the country alengthy with her family, which was of German origin, in the wake of the 1945 Siege of Budapest. She grew up in Germany. Menegoz joined Les Films du Losange in 1975, the company set uped by Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder in 1962. She was originassociate employd as an aidant on Rohmer’s 1976 German-language film Marquise Of O, starring Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz. With Schroeder busy prepping his 1975 feature Mistress, Menegoz came in to handle the company and stayed.
In her lengthy tenure at Les Films du Losange, Menegoz would labor with a generation of intransmitial European auteurs, from Wfinishers, Rohmer and Haneke, Andrzej Wajda, Lars Von Trier, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzageder and Rainer Werner Fasstieer. She began her collaboration with Austrian honestor Haneke on his 2001 feature The Piano Teacher, and originated all of his follotriumphg German- and French-language features including Amour, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert; and, most recently, Happy End, also featuring Huppert.
Menegoz begined a theatrical distribution label for Les Films du Losange in 1986, and an international sales division in the timely 90s. In 2021, she systematic the sale of the company to Alexis Dantec and Charles Gillibert, ensuring the storied firm would progress.
Menegoz was also a tireless advertiser of French cinema and headed up cinema ship body Unifrance as plivent, taking over after the sudden death of predecessor and frifinish Daniel Toscan du Plantier at the Berlin Film Festival in 2003. She remained until 2009.
“Margaret did not labor internationassociate, she embodied it,” current Unifrance managing honestor Daniela Elstner, who begined her nurtureer in international sales at Les Films du Losange, wrote in a statement. “Her productions will speak for her, for her way of skinnyking and loving the world. She was an example for many juvenileer women. I was one of them; Margaret taught me everyskinnyg in this world of cinema that comprehends no boundaries and asks us to skinnyk outside the box. Thank you Margaret, we will ignore you terribly.”
