Margaret Menegoz, the head of French production company Les Films du Losange, who produced the movies of Michael Hanke, Wim Wenders and Éric Rohmer, among others, has died. She was 83.
The company issued a statement confirming that Menegoz died in Montpellier on August 7. They cited her “love of films and work, and her loyalty to her filmmakers that have become the hallmarks of Les Films du Losange,” describing Menegoz as “open-minded towards Europe and the international scene, which she particularly cherished.”
Menegoz led Les Films du Losange for close to 50 years, taking over at the company in 1973. She produced more than 60 films, including Haneke’s Amour, The White Ribbon and Cache, Wenders’ 1977 feature The American Friend, 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 received 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 producer was born in Hungary in 1941 but was expelled from the country along 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 founded by Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder in 1962. She was originally hired as an assistant 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 manage the company and stayed.
In her long tenure at Les Films du Losange, Menegoz would work with a generation of influential European auteurs, from Wenders, Rohmer and Haneke, 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 The Piano Teacher, and produced all of his following 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 launched a theatrical distribution label for Les Films du Losange in 1986, and an international sales division in the early 90s. In 2021, she organized the sale of the company to Alexis Dantec and Charles Gillibert, ensuring the storied firm would continue.
Menegoz was also a tireless promoter of French cinema and headed up cinema export body Unifrance as president, taking over after the sudden death of predecessor and friend Daniel Toscan du Plantier at the Berlin Film Festival in 2003. She remained until 2009.
“Margaret did not work internationally, she embodied it,” current Unifrance managing director Daniela Elstner, who started her career in international sales at Les Films du Losange, wrote in a statement. “Her productions will speak for her, for 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 that knows no boundaries and invites us to think outside the box. Thank you Margaret, we will miss you terribly.”
