‘Oppenheimer’s’ Alex Wolff on ‘So Long, Marianne,’ How Leonard Cohen ‘Sacrificed Love on the Altars of Fame’

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “I sacrificed my love on the altars of fame,” Leonard Cohen said in the ‘70s,” “So Long, Marianne” showrunner Øystein Karlsen notes.

Cohen was referring of course to his ‘60s decade-long relationship with Norway’s Marianne Ilhen, which shaped him for life. One of the highest-profile and most anticipated world premieres in Series Mania main competition, “So Long, Marianne” is a coming of age love story which, in a quietly innovative genre-breaking turn,, asks whether the place in the world chosen by one character, Leonard Cohen, was always for his good.

Sold by Cineflix Rights and an eight-part series, “So Long, Marianne” begins in 1959 focusing on Norway’s Marianne Ilhen and Cohen’s love idyll on Hydra, a Greek island, which Ilhen reaches as the partner of budding Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen, and Cohen looking to find a place where, he says in Episode 1, he “can take responsibility for my own identity.” Starring Alex Wolff (“Oppenheimer,” “A Quiet Place: Day One”) as Leonard Cohen and Thea Sofie Loch Næss (“The Last Kingdom”) as Marianne Ilhen, the series takes in their chance meeting at the door of a taverna – which still exists to this day.

As their love deepends, Cohen takes his first steps to become one of the most famous singer-songwriters in the world. The series ends with Cohen releasing his first two albums which brought that fame, “running for the money and the flesh,” as he put it, on New York’s singer-songwriter scene.