Susanne Gottlieb examines her country’s rich and multifaceted film culture, and discusses with Jessica Hausner the potential of Austrian movies, the repercussions of the latest budget cuts and more; the filmmaker attends the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for a Masterclass.

Waltzing ball folk, elegant interiors, cheerful music, cheesy romance. Or rather, the barenaked soul of the working class, the long-suppressed fascist history bubbling under the surface, the structural crust of a society unwilling to change? You don’t have to pick. It is all there, in the history of Austrian film. A movie tradition that started as part of the silent film era and in the interwar period produced and nurtured many famous, internationally significant émigré filmmakers. Amongst them, Michael Curtiz, Fred Zinneman, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Alexander Korda. Even Ernst Lubitsch worked for a few years in Austria, long before he emigrated to the U.S.

It is a cinema that was dominated by sudden political and social shifts. There was the interwar period, which attracted exiled and Jewish talent from Germany, amongst them Maskerade (1933) by Willi Forst and with Paula Wessely or Episode (1934) by Walter Reisch, soon to be followed by the annihilation of Austrian film culture, even before the Anschluss to the Third Reich in 1938. Then there was the Nazi controlled propaganda work, such as Heimkehr (1938), also with Paula Wessely and Attila Hörbiger. After the war, the zeitgeist demanded to be distracted from the horrors that had been inflicted upon Europe. Escapism and kitsch romances, the “Heimatfilm”, dominated the screen, the Sissi-trilogy by Ernst Marischka being a prime example.

Rising from the ashes

The 1960s and 1970s saw a combination of state institutions, private producers and film schools gradually reconstituting film production. A new generation - amongst them Peter Patzak, Axel Corti or Ulrich Seidl - soon began experimenting with more socially critical and modernist approaches. They were influenced by the French New Wave, Italian Neorealism or British kitchen-sink dramas, and centred on a critical and sometimes cynical look at Austrian society, urban setting, alienation and moral hypocrisy.
During the 1980s and 1990s, yet another new wave of filmmakers started working. Called the New Austrian Film, its current members, directors, and producers pursued festival circuits and auteurist projects, lifting Austrian film once again onto an international world stage. Generally, Barbara Albert’s Nordrand from 1999 is cited as a turning point for the new wave. It was the first Austrian film by a female director selected for the competition at the Venice Film Festival. It focused on multiculturalism, youth, marginalisation, and urban realism, which became hallmarks of New Austrian Cinema.

The female auteur rises

Albert was one of the co-founders of the production company Coop 99, which became central in producing auteur-driven Austrian films. A later member of the company is Jessica Hausner, another important director of the New Wave.

Hausner is a very special guest at this year’s Industry@TallinnTallinn Film Festival (the industry arm of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival) with the masterclass Crafting Atmosphere: The Symbiosis of Sound and Image in Jessica Hausner’s Cinema. Austria is the Spotlight country of the year.

Hausner has focused extensively on female stories. Her style is renowned for the minimalist and precise composition of the frames, graded in a cold and pastll colour palette. There is little camera movement, and the focus is on the inner conflicts of her mostly female protagonists.In the Masterclass, Hausner will also talk about how she uses image, sound, and music in order to build a distinctive tone, as well as the stylization and psychological tension she employs.

Moral dilemmas and social pressures drive these women, yet Hausner rarely gives too much away about their feelings. Her gaze is observing; the audience has to deduce their own meaning.“Women have long been excluded from public life, from decision making on a larger level than only their own family,” Hausner explains her motivations to me. “As a consequence, women often feel alienated and not met by the way structures and professional life have been organised. To some extent, they stay outsiders in a world led by men.”

Keeping the distance is crucial to any relationship in life, says Hausner. “Even the closest relative or friend will stay a stranger to some extent. Never will we be able to know what another person is thinking or feeling”. In her own way, Hausner is commenting on society’s need for approval. “People often pretend or try to please others. This natural distance I try to keep when making a film, that is how my characters stay mysterious, just the way any person we know will keep their inner motions to themselves.”

Hausner’s latest feature Club Zero (2023, pictured at the top of this article) included Hollywood star Mia Wasikowska as a morally ambiguous teacher, who makes students go on strict diets, calling it “conscious eating”.

The peculiar taste of Austrian audiences

International acclaim does not necessarily translate into a home audience. Take the A-festival winners of this century. In 2001, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and awards for the actors Benoit Magimel and Isabelle Huppert. In Austria, according to the Austrian Film Institute (ÖFI), only 98.309 people saw it. Ulrich Seidl’s Dog Days, which won the Grand Special Jury Prize in Venice the same year, did only slightly better. 107.760 people.

The domestic theatrical market, however, has remained small in comparison to the growth in production incentives. Lately, Great Freedom by Sebastian Meise (2021, Jury Prize Un Certain Regard in Cannes), Sonne by Kurdwin Ayub (2022, Best First Feature at Berlinale) and The Devil’s Bath by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (2024, Silver Bear for Artistic Contribution at Berlinale; pictured just above) managed only to scoop up 6.667, 24.230 and 20.672 viewers respectively. That is only a very small fraction of the country’s box office. The country counted more than 11.3 million film visits in 2024.

Multiple funding routes

Since the 2000s, there have been some shifts in funding laws and export promotion. Austrian productions rely increasingly more on international co-productions, often with Germany, and festival premieres in order to secure sales and distribution outside of Austria. Over the past two decades, Austria’s film funding landscape has moved from a culture support model to a hybrid system combining artistic, economic, and international money sources. At the national level, the ÖFI has always been the central funding body.

Film Industry Support Austria (Fisa+) is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy. With the changes, international films and series are now eligible for Austrian funding. 2023 was a good year for cinema made in Austria. According to a report by the Vienna Film Commission, a total of 827 films and series were produced on Austrian soil, with applications for 652 domestic and international film projects submitted to the Vienna Film Incentive funding programme. This represents an increase of 4.5 percent compared to 2022. 104 projects originated abroad. FISA+ reported 69 funded projects. Additional projects received support from the Austrian Film Institute, the Ministry of Culture, and other funding institutions (both national and regional). This is when Kate Winslet shot her series The Regime at the Schönbrunn Palace, in Vienna. Guy Ritchie shot Fountain of Youth (2025), featuring Natalie Portman and John Krasinksi.

Jessica Hausner herself has also seen these two sides to filmmaking in Austria. Her film Lourdes, which won the Fipresci Prize in Venice in 2009, had 16.269 viewers according to ÖFI. Little Joe, for which the lead Emily Beecham won an award at Cannes in 2019, sold only 6.697 tickets. Hausner confesses: “as a filmmaker in Austria, early on I decided to make films for an international audience since the interest within Austria has been low”, Hausner recalls.

Budget cuts

Film professionals seeking opportunities in Austria should understand that the country is in the middle of restructuring its funding system, with many budget cuts in place.

The much cherished ÖFI+ has come under attack. Austria's federal cultural budget, after reaching a high in 2024 and early 2025, will be reduced back to the 2023 level. Reports in newspapers such as Kurier or Der Standard indicated that for 2026 the budget could drop to as low as 15.5 million Euro. That is a radical shift again, given that only 2024 it had been increased from 15.5 million Euro to 39.9 million Euro. This represents a cut of 61.2%. The Culture Ministry wants to develop new guidelines that “would prioritise Austrian film“ and focus less on the international film industry.

Because of this cut, uncertainty and delay, some international productions were cancelled or relocated. For example, the production for the show The White Lotus reportedly dropped Austria as a setting for an upcoming season. The upcoming sixth film of the The Hunger Games franchise already had 25 days of filming planned in Gastein and Tyrol. Now this, too, is cancelled. The film industry associations describe this as an “alarm signal” for the Austrian film location and production industry.

Jessica Hausner was amongst the many filmmakers - others include Marie Kreutzer, Josef Hader, David Schalko, etc - that warned the government against these cuts, and the negative impact on Austrian film. “This amounts to the dismantling of the industry, leading to a massive increase in unemployment, the loss of local storytelling and identity, and indeed, the permanent damage to an entire branch of culture!“, the letter, available on the website of the Austrian Filmmakers Association, says. “It doesn't help the budget; on the contrary, it only widens the budget deficit. Because every euro invested in film flows back into the budget at a rate of 1.42 euro. Film remains one of the few art forms that generates more revenue than it spends, even in this country - thus strengthening the economy and helping to balance the budget.“

Despite the cuts, Hausner has been running safe with producing abroad. She is certain that there is hope: “In the last years, the support and the attention also within Austria have increased.” This is partially due to a new generation of filmmakers and audiences. “Young audiences are used to international films now, which makes it easier to show English-language films like mine”.

It remains to be seen what Jessica next project is going to be.

Find out more and join the Crafting Atmosphere: The Symbiosis of Sound and Image in Jessica Hausner’s Cinema Masterclass by clicking here.

For more information on the state of Austrian cinema we recommend the Filmwirtschaftsbericht Österreich 2024 for further reading.

This piece is a cross-publication in partnership with the DMovies.org.