Producer Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, producer-director-writer Luise Kolm and the Austro-Hungarian directors Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda were among the pioneers of early Austrian cinema.

Several Austrian directors pursued careers in Weimar Germany and later in the United States, among them Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger.

Between the two World Wars, directors like E. W. Emo and Henry Koster - the latter of whom had emigrated from Austria, provided examples of Austrian film comedies.

Veteran and new directors such as Ernst Marischka, Franz Antel, Geza von Cziffra, Geza von Bolvary and Walter Kolm-Veltee revised the comedy, provincial Heimatfilm, and biopic traditions, and began a new genre of the opulent imperial epic (e.g. Marischka's Sissi films and Antel's imperial era musicals) which rivaled Hollywood entertainment at the international box office.

With national subsidy arriving in 1981, a new generation of Austrian filmmakers established themselves at home and international festivals in the 1980s and 90s, among them Axel Corti, Niki List, Paul Harather, Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, Harald Sicheritz, Stefan Ruzowitzky and Ulrich Seidl.

Austrian or Austrian-identifying actors who have achieved international success from the 1920s to the present include Erich von Stroheim, Elisabeth Bergner, Joseph Schildkraut, Paul Henreid, Hedy Lamarr, Walter Slezak, Oskar Homolka, Nadja Tiller, Senta Berger, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Maximilian Schell, Maria Schell, Romy Schneider, Oskar Werner, Vanessa Brown, Gusti Huber, Curd Jürgens, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Kasznar, Marisa Mell, Helmut Berger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Christoph Waltz.

The first films by an Austrian filmmaker were a series of short erotic movies such as Am Sklavenmarkt produced by the photographer Johann Schwarzer, who founded the Saturn-Film company in 1906.

Many of the films produced in this period were of a lower quality than those of established film-producing nations like France, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany and Italy.

The best known Austrian expressionist film is The Hands of Orlac (1924) by German director Robert Wiene which starred Conrad Veidt and Fritz Kortner.

The majority of Jewish Austrian directors, actors and other employees of the film industry, along with many non-Jewish opponents of the Nazis emigrated in the following years to France, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and the United States.

Many of the Austrian emigrants went on to successful careers in the United States, notably the directors Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Otto Preminger, Joe May and Edgar G. Ulmer.

Wien-Film produced few openly propagandistic films; the majority of its output was apparently harmless comedies, which often had an antidemocratic and anti-semitic subtext.

Although Nazi censorship was strict, a few films contained criticism hidden at a metaphorical level, for example the musical comedies of Willi Forst.

This explains the popularity of the Sissi films starring Romy Schneider as the Empress Elizabeth which found not only domestic but international success.

With the modern industry having to compete with leisure pursuits like television and computers which did not exist in its heyday of the interwar period and the 1950s, a return to the production levels of those times seems most unlikely.

However, the Austrian industry did begin to rediscover different film genres which had been largely forgotten from the 1930s through to the 1960s when sentimental comedies dominated the domestic scene.

These companies also produce more challenging films, but only in limited numbers as productions other than comedies are financially risky in Austria unless foreign distribution can be secured.

High-quality Austrian films, which have won more and more critical acclaim in recent years, are usually produced by small production companies, often in co-production with other countries.

Other successful Austrian films (wholly Austrian and co-productions) since 2000 are We Feed the World (Erwin Wagenhofer), Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper), Calling Hedy Lamarr (Georg Misch), Grbavica (Jasmila Žbanić), Slumming (Michael Glawogger), Silentium and Komm, süßer Tod (both Wolfgang Murnberger), The Edukators (Hans Weingartner) and Dog Days (Ulrich Seidl).

Other notable contemporary directors are Barbara Albert, Andrea Maria Dusl, Elisabeth Scharang, Jessica Hausner, Stefan Ruzowitzky, Ruth Mader, Kurt Palm, Nikolaus Geyrhalter and, resident in the U.S., Robert Dornhelm.