Solveig Anspach, (pictured) French/Icelandic writer/director who was working on the feature film Aquatic Effect co-produced by Zik Zak Filmworks, has just passed away following a long battle with cancer. She was 54.
A graduate from Paris film school La Femis, Anspach’s breakthrough came with Haut les coeurs, a fiction film based on her own experience of struggling with breast cancer, for which Karin Viard won a Cesar, Best Actress Award. Anspach’s following work Made in the USA, a chilling documentary about an execution in Texas won the François Chalais Award at the Directors Fortnight 2001 in Cannes. Stormy Weather (2003) screened at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, marked the director’s first collaboration with Icelandic actress Didda Jonsdottir who starred in three other films part of a trilogy: Back Soon (2008), The Queen of Montreuil (2012) and the unfinished Aquatic Effect. Back Soon, winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award in Locarno was the first film co-produced by Zik Zak Filmworks. The company’s co-founder and producer Skúli Malmquist said: “Solveig was simply put, one of a kind, she made magic happen all around her, simply by being herself, one would move a mountain for her if she asked you to.”