Moritz de Hadeln, a Switzerland-based festival director known for directing the Locarno Film Festival, the Berlinale and the Venice Film Festival, died Saturday in a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland. Variety has confirmed. He was 85 years old.

Born in 1940 in Exeter, England, de Hadeln came from a family of artists. His grandfather, Detlev Freiherr von Hadeln, was a noted art historian of the Venetian Renaissance; his father, Harry, founded an art publishing house 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 founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival in Switzerland in 1969. Then, from 1972 to 1977, he directed the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, furthering the international reach of this prominent independent film event.

Beginning in 1980, de Hadeln directed the Berlinale for more than 20 years before leaving in 2001.

“I guess I can be proud to present the first films of Roland Emmerich, Tsai Ming-liang, Gus Van Sant, Ang Lee or Zhang Yimou,” he said in an op-ed for Variety in 2010. “And what great memories to present 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 Kirk Douglas (2001), just to name a few. Then came the two great events of my time: the collapse of the Wall of Berlin and only a few months later the festival was organized in both parts of the city, and in 2000 the Zoo Palast said goodbye and the festival moved to the rebuilt Potsdamer Platz, where it is today.

In 2002, de Hadeln became the first non-Italian artistic director of the Venice Film Festival, when political disputes prevented an Italian from being appointed to the position. Having raced against the clock to assemble a cast in the short time since accepting the job in March, in July Hadeln unveiled a rich Lido cast that began with Miramax’s “Frida” – which chronicles the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her troubled relationship with fellow painter Diego Rivera – and comprised five Miramax titles, including Stephen Daldry’s “The Hours,” starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep and Ed Harris; and Stephen Frears’ “Dirty Pretty Things,” starring “Amelie” star Audrey Tautou.

“After decades of Italian auteurism, which severely imitated the French New Wave, Venice has decided to rediscover the key role played by the producer,” wrote Tullio Kezich, film critic for Corriere della Sera.

De Hadeln, in 2018, came under fire for writing an op-ed in Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoc praising disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein as “one of the few Hollywood producers who really loved movies… The lynching he is experiencing now is simply disgusting.”

Over the decades, De Hadeln served on many international juries, including in Karlovy Vary, Venice, Moscow, Montreal, Turin, Tehran, Damascus, kyiv and Yerevan. He was also a member of the European Film Academy. His wife and close collaborator Erika de Hadeln died at the age of 77 in 2018 after a long illness.