Overview
- De Hadeln died in a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland, from complications after a recent medical procedure, sources close to his biographer Christian Jungen confirmed to multiple outlets on Saturday, July 4.
- He began shaping festivals in 1969 when he and his wife Erika founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival, now Visions du Réel, and later ran Locarno where he introduced the Piazza Grande outdoor screenings.
- De Hadeln led the Berlin International Film Festival for more than two decades, brought early computerization to its operations, co-founded the European Film Market to link buyers and sellers, and moved the Berlinale to Potsdamer Platz around 2000.
- In 2002 he became Venice’s first non-Italian artistic director in recent memory and oversaw a rapid reworking of the Lido program and festival infrastructure for the 2002–2003 editions.
- His legacy is mixed: he helped bring Chinese and Soviet cinema to Western audiences and launched many careers while later attracting criticism for a 2018 Die Weltwoche op-ed defending Harvey Weinstein, a dispute now being revisited in obituaries and industry remembrances.