Virgil Widrich (born 16 May 1967 in Salzburg) is an Austrian director, screenwriter, filmmaker and multimedia artist.
Widrich works on a large number of films and multimedia projects, which have received a total of 290 film awards. He is known especially for his numerous short films and multimedia works.
Virgil Widrich was born in Salzburg, the son of physician and politician Gerheid Widrich and journalist Hans Widrich, who served for nearly three decades as head of press at the Salzburg Festival.
He grew up in a 500-year-old house on the Mönchsberg, surrounded by artists and filmmakers such as Peter Handke and Wim Wenders, who were frequent visitors. At the age of 13 he received his first Super 8 film camera and began making short films, including My Homelife, Gebratenes Fleisch and 3 mal Ulf (1980). This was followed by Auch Farbe kann träumen (1981) and Monster in Salzburg (1982), his first project involving actors and stop motion animation.
After finishing school at the Akademisches Gymnasium in Salzburg, Widrich briefly attended the Vienna Film Academy before working as assistant to cinematographer and director John Bailey. In 1990 he went to Hollywood to collaborate with Bailey on the science-fiction comedy The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe. In 1993 he co-organized a new festival for Austrian film, later known as the Diagonale.
From 1997 onwards he concentrated on his own projects again. His short film tx-transform , co-directed with Martin Reinhart, was presented at Ars Electronica. He then wrote and directed his feature film Heller als der Mond ("Brighter than the Moon", 1999), followed by the internationally acclaimed short Copy Shop (2001), which received 43 awards and an Oscar nomination. His next short, Fast Film (2003), was screened at over 500 festivals and received more than 35 international prizes.
In 2001 Widrich founded the multimedia company checkpointmedia GmbH, which develops installations and digital media for museums and cultural institutions. Among his early large-scale projects was the redesign of over 100 interactive media stations for the Technical Museum Vienna (1999). He later co-founded the production company Amour Fou Film (shareholder until 2007) and served as chairman of the Austrian Film Directors’ Association from 2004 to 2007.
Widrich is a member of the Academy of Austrian Film and, since 2024, of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. From 2007 to 2010 he was Professor for Digital Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he has led the post-graduate master programme Art & Science since 2010. He is also active in artistic research, directing projects such as Liquid Things (2011–2014), Data Loam (2017–2020) and Radical Matter (2021–2025).
Widrich has three sons with film director Anja Salomonowitz. One of them, Oskar Salomonowitz (2008–2020), known for his role in the film This Movie is a Gift , died in an accident in 2020.
In addition to his work in film and multimedia, Widrich is also active in artistic research.
His main research projects include:
Since 2011: project development for a feature-length animated film titled "Micromeo", screenplay in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière.
In total, Virgil Widrich's work has received more than 290 international awards.
for Heller als der Mond (Brighter than the Moon) (2000):
for Copy Shop (2001):
for Fast Film (2003):
for Nena & Dave Stewart: Be my Rebel (2018):
for tx-reverse (2019):
for There is exactly enough time (2021):
for checkpointmedia:
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