Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

Director: Nick Broomfield

2019, 97 minutes, Digital, R

Distributor: Roadside Attractions

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is renowned filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s most personal and romantic film of his storied career. The documentary starts on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, where Leonard Cohen, then a struggling and unknown fiction writer, and Marianne Ihlen, a single mother with a young son, became part of community of expat artists, writers and musicians. Never-before-seen footage shot by Broomfield and legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker make for a unique portrait of an idyllic 1960’s bohemia. It was a time that left a lasting imprint on both Marianne and Leonard, whose friendship would last another fifty years before their deaths in 2016.

“Achieving the kind of balance to which Cohen always aspired, Marianne & Leonard is heartbreaking and heartening in Zen-like equal measure.” – Anne Hornaday, The Washington Post