Moritz de Hadeln, the prolific film festival director who headed up Locarno, Berlin and Venice across a decades-spanning career, has died. He was 85.
De Hadeln, who earned the title “Mr. Film Festival” from his biographer and CEO of Zurich Film Festival Christian Jungen, died on Saturday, July 4, in a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland, close to his home. Jungen confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the Swiss suffered from complications following a recent medical procedure.
Born in England in 1940, de Hadeln’s first foray in the industry came as a documentarian and photographer. He directed his first feature, Le Pele, in 1963, and his second film, Ombres et Mirages, came shortly after in 1966. He was a film editor in Zurich alongside Yves Allegret, and worked as an assistant director at CCC Film Studios Berlin. In 1969, de Hadeln and his wife, Erika von dem Hagen, founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival (known as the Visions du Reel festival today) which he directed until 1979. Erika took over and led Nyon from 1981 to 1993.
De Hadeln’s career lift-off came in 1972, when he was chief of the Locarno International Film Festival and said to have heralded in a new era of international recognition for the event. During his time in charge at Locarno, de Hadeln introduced the outdoor screenings on the Piazza Grande and introduced numerous sidebar events.
After seven years in charge of Locarno, de Hadeln was invited to head the Berlinale from 1979 and made it the first festival in the world to use computer technology for its data processing. Through a tumultuous political landscape in the early 1980s, he was applauded for bringing together East and West Berlin at the film festival, and with Beki Probst, he founded the European Film Market. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, de Hadeln snapped at the chance to transform the Berlinale into a major landing place for international film in Europe. In 2000, he relocated the event to the Potsdamer Platz. Among some of the cinema’s greatest hits to have premiered under de Hadeln’s watch during his 20-year stretch in charge of Berlin are Rain Man (1988), Fitzcarraldo (1982), In the Name of the Father (1993), Central Station (1998) and Magnolia (2000).
Following 21 years as head of the Berlinale, de Hadeln then worked his magic in Venice. From 2002 to 2003, he is described as having modernized the festival’s infrastructure, and reinventing its reputation on the global stage. He worked closely with Biennale president Franco Bernabè during this time, and was responsible for the premieres of The Magdalene Sisters (2002), Femme Fatale (2002), The Return (2003) and 21 Grams (2003).
His time in the spotlight wasn’t without controversy, including in 2018 when de Hadeln wrote an opinion piece in the Swiss daily Die Weltwoche defending disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein. He described Weinstein as one of the few Hollywood producers who really loved the movies, and said backlash against him was “disgusting.”
Naturally, de Hadeln served on a huge number of international juries throughout his career, including in Karlovy Vary, Venice, Moscow, Montreal, Torino, and Tehran, Damascus, Kyiv and Yerevan. He was a member of the European Film Academy. His wife died aged 77 in 2018.
“Big names such as Gina Lollobrigida, Ang Lee, and Steven Spielberg — along with a few scandals — marked the career of Moritz de Hadeln, an internationally renowned pioneer of the film festival world,” says the description for Jungen’s book on de Hadeln’s colorful life. “He directed festivals in Berlin, Venice, and Locarno and founded the documentary film festival in Nyon. He introduced Western audiences to Chinese and Soviet cinema, among others, often navigating diplomatic negotiations and political power struggles in the process.”
