Producer Marianne Slot will continue her successful collaboration with Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, following 2024 “Woman at War” with TV 🍏 show “The Danish Woman” and upcoming feature film “Normal Men.”
“It’s a comedy, as you can imagine. Benedikt Erlingsson and a 🍏 feminist producer – that’s a good combination,” she laughs, recalling their previous film about an environmental activist going rogue.
“’Woman at 🍏 War’ was so joyful to make. It is still being shown and used as a reference, even by politicians in 🍏 many different countries.”
Slot talks to Variety in Locarno, when she is picking up the Raimondo Rezzonico Award, given to industry 🍏 figures who have played a major role in international production.
A French producer of Danish origin, she has collaborated with such 🍏 directors as Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso and Sergei Loznitsa and has been co-producing Lars von Trier’s films since 1995’s “Breaking 🍏 the Waves,” including “The House That Jack Built.”
Currently, she is also set to co-produce Karla Badillo’s debut feature “Oca” (“Goose”).
“She 🍏 is so full of cinema,” says Slot about the director.
“I jump into new cultures and I have to immerse myself 🍏 in them. On [Viggo Mortensen starrer] ‘Eureka’ with Lisandro Alonso, we had to go to the Indian reservation and meet 🍏 the tribe. I really do go to all these places.”
“She really believes in the cause and in the ‘light’ that 🍏 good films carry with them,” shares Benedikt Erlingsson via email.
“She is a warrior and fights for her films like a 🍏 brave knight dressed in white. Marianne has the talent of being brutally honest and at the same time perfectly sophisticated 🍏 and diplomatic.
If she had chosen a political career, she would be the secretary-general of the United Nations by now.”
Her production 🍏 company Slot Machine has always been “auteur-driven,” Slot notes.
“I have been producing for 30 years and what interests me the 🍏 most is going off the highway and onto little roads, exploring cinema and new forms.”
But personal relationships are also important.
“I 🍏 stay close to the director. You need to know if you can take risks together,” she says.
“With someone like Lars 🍏 [von Trier], provocation is what he does. He is shocking, because he doesn’t think there are any limits to what 🍏 you can show. He really dares to talk about things that are very, very difficult. Things that we don’t necessarily 🍏 want to see.”
“He wants people to think. It’s such a shame that some of them, or at least certain kinds 🍏 of press, are more interested in ‘scandals.’ They want headlines, but if you really dive into his work, it’s very 🍏 deep and very interesting,” she adds.
“Recently, there was a retrospective of his work at La Rochelle Intl. Film Festival and 🍏 many young viewers were discovering him for the first time. For them, it’s contemporary cinema. Not one of these films 🍏 has dated.”
While Slot still believes in the power of name directors, she is keeping an eye on the changing film 🍏 landscape.
“I don’t think there is less desire for films from people who are willing to take risks, but we have 🍏 to make sure we can keep making them,” she notes.
“Everyone keeps talking about content, about stars, but we are not 🍏 talking about the producers. We need to start doing that, because independent producers are becoming endangered species. And without them, 🍏 this kind of cinema simply won’t exist.”
“That’s why this award is absolutely fantastic, because even at festivals, sometimes we are 🍏 not even mentioned in the catalogue. When everything goes smoothly, people go: ‘Why do we need a producer?’ And then 🍏 things go to shit.”
Slot tries to approach each project differently, she explains.
“What I always do, or at least have been 🍏 doing for the last 10 or so years, is trying to restructure the production. I am a French producer but 🍏 I come from Denmark and work with directors from all over the world, from Japan to Iceland. Which means I 🍏 don’t have a safety net, but it gives me freedom.”
“We keep talking about how we can survive, how we can 🍏 protect creativity, but we also have to understand where the money comes from. Then again, I don’t do it for 🍏 money. I never think about making money, I think about making movies. And I believe we can continue to do 🍏 that.”
