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Moritz de Hadeln, the Switzerland-based festival director known for heading the Locarno Film Festival, the Berlinale, and the Venice Film Festival, died on Saturday at a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland, Variety has confirmed.
He was 85.
Born in 1940 in Exeter, England, de Hadeln hailed from an artistic family. His grandfather, Detlev Freiherr von Hadeln, was a prominent art historian of the Venetian Renaissance; his father, Harry, founded an art publishing company in Florence, Italy; and his mother, Alexandra Balaceano, was a sculptor and painter. After starting out as a photographer and documentary director, de Hadeln and his wife Erika in 1969 founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival in Switzerland. Then From 1972-1977, he directed Switzerland’s Locarno International Film Festival, boosting the prominent indie cinema event’s international reach.
Starting in 1980, de Hadeln ran the Berlinale for more than 20 years before leaving in 2001.
“I guess I can be proud for presenting the first films of Roland Emmerich, Tsai Ming-liang, Gus Van Sant, of Ang Lee or Zhang Yimou,” he said in an op-ed for Variety in 2010. “And what dear memories when presenting a Golden Bear for lifetime achievement to Alec Guinness (1988), Dustin Hoffman (1989), Gregory Peck and Billy Wilder (1993), Sophia Loren (1994), Jack Lemmon (1996), Shirley MacLaine (1999) or to Kirk Douglas (2001) just to mention a few. Then came the two great events of my time: the collapse of the Berlin Wall and only a few months later the festival organized in both parts of the town, and in 2000 the farewell to the Zoo Palast and the relocation of the festival on the rebuilt Potsdamer Platz, where it is today.”
In 2002, de Hadeln became the Venice Film Festival’s first non-Italian artistic director, when political squabbling prevented an Italian from being appointed to the job. Having raced against the clock to assemble a lineup in the short time since he accepted the position in March, in July de Hadeln unveiled a rich Lido lineup that opened with Miramax’s “Frida” — tracing the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her troubled relationship with fellow painter Diego Rivera — and comprised five Miramax titles including Stephen Daldry’s “The Hours,” starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep and Ed Harris; and Stephen Frears’ “Dirty Pretty Things,” toplining “Amelie” star Audrey Tautou.
“After decades of Italian auteurism, which badly aped France’s New Wave, Venice has decided to rediscover the key role played by the producer,” wrote Tullio Kezich, film critic for Corriere della Sera.
De Hadeln, in 2018, came under fire for writing an op-ed in the Swiss daily Die Weltwoc praising disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein as “one of the few Hollywood producers who really loved the movies…The lynching he is now experiencing is simply disgusting.”
De Hadeln over the decades served on many international jury panels, including in Karlovy Vary, Venice, Moscow, Montreal, Torino, Tehran, Damascus, Kyiv and Yerevan. He was also a member of the European Film Academy. His wife and close collaborator Erika de Hadeln died at 77 in 2018 after a long illness.
