Moritz de Hadeln, Former Berlinale and Venice Film Festival Chief, Dies at 85
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- Moritz de Hadeln died Saturday at a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland, at age 85, Variety confirmed.
- De Hadeln ran the Berlinale from 1980 until 2001, later recalling that his tenure spanned the fall of the Berlin Wall, a unified-city festival, and the 2000 relocation from the Zoo Palast to Potsdamer Platz.
- De Hadeln became the Venice Film Festival's first non-Italian artistic director in 2002, rushing to assemble a lineup that opened with Miramax's "Frida" and included "The Hours" and "Dirty Pretty Things."
- De Hadeln directed Switzerland's Locarno International Film Festival from 1972 to 1977, expanding its international reach, and in 1969 co-founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival with his wife Erika.
- De Hadeln drew criticism in 2018 after writing a Die Weltwoc op-ed praising disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein as someone who "really loved the movies" and calling the fallout a "lynching."
- De Hadeln served on jury panels across Karlovy Vary, Venice, Moscow, Montreal, Torino, Tehran, Damascus, Kyiv, and Yerevan, and was a member of the European Film Academy.
Why it matters: De Hadeln's 30-plus-year stewardship of Locarno, Berlin, and Venice shaped the international art-house circuit that launched filmmakers like Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, and Gus Van Sant; his 2018 defense of Weinstein, included here in his own Variety-quoted words, complicates the celebratory framing of his legacy and explains why some outlets may weigh the controversy against the career.
