Locarno Film Festival will honor French-Danish producer Marianne Slot with its Raimondo Rezzonico Award, given to figures who have played a major role in international production, at its 76th edition running from August 2 to 12.
Over the course of her 30-year career, Slot has worked with a host of internationally renowned auteurs including Lars von Trier, Lucrecia Martel, Bent Hamer, Malgoska Szumowska, Paz Encina, Lisandro Alonso, Sergei Loznitsa, Naomi Kawase and Benedikt Erlingsson.
Slot broke into producing on the early works of von Trier, taking co-producer credits on the original The Kingdom TV series as well as Breaking The Waves and The Idiots, and has since become a key figure on the international arthouse co-production scene.
The producer will be in Cannes this year with Lisandro Alonso’s ambitious historical drama Eureka starring Viggo Mortensen, which world premieres in the Cannes Premiere section.
“Marianne Slot’s approach to film production has left a deep and lasting mark on contemporary cinema, rewriting the rules of the game for collaboration and ideation between filmmakers and producers, with her enduring preference for the singularity of the gaze and tireless defense of creative freedom,” said Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro.
“At a time when cinema risks flatlining into an endless repetition of existing models, Marianne Slot leads by example, demonstrating the beauty of both freedom and risk.”
Slot will receive the prize on August 5 and the tribute will include a screening of Benedikt Erlingsson’s Woman At War, which will be followed by an on-stage conversation on August 6.
Recent recipients of the Raimondo Rezzonico Award have included Jason Blum, Gale Anne Hurd, Komplizen trio Janine Jackowski Maren Ade and Jonas Dornbach as well as Ted Hope and Michel Merkt.