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.”
