The Luxembourgish producer explains how she helped build her company through politically engaged hybrid and immersive works

Luxembourg-based producer Marion Guth, co-founder of a_BAHN, is one of European Film Promotion’s Producers on the Move this year, set to participate in the Cannes initiative. a_BAHN focuses on developing the art of hybridisation and produced, among others, Zero Impunity, the transmedia documentary Soundhunters and VR films such as 7 Lives or Ayahuasca by Jan Kounen. Guth’s recent projects include the Venice Immersive title Ceci est mon coeur (2024), also seen in Cannes, and Kateryna Gornostai’s documentary Timestamp, which screened in competition in Berlin.

Cineuropa: Could you talk us through your career as a producer?
Marion Guth: I co-founded a_BAHN in Luxembourg in 2011, but I did not come from a typical background. I did not go to film school. I come from a working-class family and I was the first person in it to pursue higher education. I learned production by being immersed in it, sometimes through instinct and sometimes through mistakes. I often say that I fell into production by chance, but stayed because it is the place where many things I care about come together: artistic taste, politics, money, logistics and relationships. I like the fact that producing is concrete. At a certain point, an idea has to confront reality.

A very important project for me was Zero Impunity by Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies (also cofounders of a_BAHN and long-time friends). It was a hybrid documentary, animation and transmedia project about conflict-related sexual violence. It screened at Annecy and many other festivals, but the real lesson was elsewhere: it taught me how heavy and complex a project can become when you are dealing with a sensitive political subject, legal risks, NGOs, journalists, broadcasters, artists and an impact campaign at the same time. Later, Draw for Change! confirmed that we wanted to work on projects with a strong political and international dimension. In parallel, immersive works such as Ayahuasca, Cosmos Within Us and Ceci est mon cœur helped us forge a path in forms that do not always fit within traditional cinema categories.

What do you think is the current situation in Luxembourg with regards to film production? What are your expectations for the upcoming future?
Luxembourg is a very small country, which means the industry is necessarily international by nature. We cannot think only nationally because the market is too limited. Co-production is not an option for us, it is the foundation of the system. That also forces producers to understand very quickly what they actually bring to a project, creatively, financially and structurally. At the same time, Luxembourg has built a strong and quite unique ecosystem over the past years. The support structures are solid, crews are highly skilled and there is real openness towards experimentation, especially around hybrid and immersive forms. What I find interesting is that Luxembourg often functions as a kind of crossroads between different European sensibilities and industries. Of course, there are also challenges. Financing has become more fragile everywhere, and smaller industries are particularly exposed to shifts in the market. Streamers have changed the landscape, broadcasters are more cautious and competition for visibility is increasingly intense. But I also think these constraints force us to stay inventive and internationally connected. For the future, I hope Luxembourg continues investing not only in production volume, but also in artistic risk and emerging forms of storytelling. I think Europe needs smaller countries with strong creative identities because they often allow for more freedom, experimentation and singular voices.

What kind of benefits do you think Producers on the Move can bring to your career and to the sector more broadly?
I do not see Producers on the Move as simply a networking event. What interests me is meeting producers who are carrying the same kind of weight: companies, teams, projects, responsibilities, doubts and ambition. There is a specific kind of conversation that can happen between producers when they are not pretending that everything is simple. I took part in EAVE in 2015, and what stayed with me was not only the training, but also the seriousness of the peer group. Relationships in European production take time. You need to understand how people think, how they handle pressure, what they are good at and what they are cautious about. For a_BAHN, this moment is important because we are moving towards larger animated features and more ambitious immersive works. I hope Producers on the Move will help me build relationships with people who are looking for a genuine partner, not simply a Luxembourgish line in a financing plan.

What are you currently working on?
I am working on Red Zone, an animated docudrama by Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk, with Moon Man in Ukraine and Vivement Lundi! in France. Iryna’s work moves me because she does not speak about war in an abstract way. She looks at daily life, humour, tenderness, fear, resistance. She keeps people alive as people, not only as symbols. We are also developing Lyra & Armin, an animated feature which is a modern take on Rhine legends, by Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies. It is a larger-scale project for us, and it represents the direction in which I want a_BAHN to grow: ambitious European animation with a strong authorial point of view. On the immersive works side, we are producing Future Rites by Sandra Rodriguez and Alexander Whitley, which is inspired by The Rite of Spring. What interests me there is that the project starts from the body and from collective movement, not from technology. I am also developing Strata, by Lilian Hess, which deals with queer voices and identity in a very precise artistic way. These projects may look very different from the outside, but for me they belong to the same approach: each of them requires a specific form, and my job is to create the conditions that allow that form to exist.