Moritz de Hadeln remembered at Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival has opened on the Lido, and the New York Times is using the occasion to remember Moritz de Hadeln, the festival's director from 1989 to 1999, who died this year. In a tribute published this week, the paper describes his legacy as one of bringing film to the masses and celebrating the power of cinema as a shared cultural experience.

De Hadeln's career spanned some of Europe's most important film festivals. Before Venice, he directed the Locarno Festival in Switzerland, and after Venice he led the Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, from 2001 to 2006. The New York Times notes that his approach was consistently populist in the best sense — he believed festivals should not be hermetic gatherings for critics and industry insiders but open windows onto world cinema for broad audiences.

His decade at Venice coincided with a period of transition for Italian cinema, as the industry adjusted to the end of the studio era and the rise of international co-productions. De Hadeln's programming reflected that shift, giving space to both established auteurs and emerging directors from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The tribute appears as the 83rd Venice Film Festival gets underway on the Lido, the slender island that has hosted the event for nearly a century. The New York Times has published a separate piece this week on the island setting itself, describing how Lido is transformed once a year into a rich field of artistic expression. The two articles together frame the festival as both a place and a tradition — a physical location with a particular atmosphere and an institution shaped by the figures who ran it.

De Hadeln's Venice years were marked by a series of discoveries that later defined the festival's reputation. The New York Times does not detail individual editions, but his broader career is remembered for championing filmmakers who went on to international prominence. His move to Berlin after Venice was unusual — few festival directors lead three major European events — and it speaks to the regard in which he was held across the continent's festival circuit.

For the culture desk of La Veduta, the tribute is a reminder that the Venice Biennale's film section is not merely a marketplace or a red-carpet spectacle. It is an institution with a memory, built by people like de Hadeln who treated cinema as a popular art rather than a niche pursuit. His belief that festivals should serve audiences, not just juries, remains a live argument in an era when streaming platforms compete with theatrical releases and festival premieres increasingly move online.

The festival's current edition includes a documentary by Wim Wenders on the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, a lifetime achievement award for the American actress Ellen Burstyn, and a slate that the New York Times has previewed in several articles this week. De Hadeln's name may not be on the program, but his influence — the conviction that a film festival should be an event for everyone, not just the initiated — runs through it.