Wolfgang Ritzberger

He started as an extra and stayed in film.

Still at school at the time, then training in acting and voice, then work as a microphone and camera assistant on television programmes, commercials and international features. At the ORF from 1978 to 1996, ending as senior editor on Zeit im Bild II. Then film, and in 2000 his own company.

What stayed with him

The news desk shows in the films. The Last Days of Mankind is a film about war and propaganda built from archives, historians and military analysts. Brilliant traces a hundred and four years of a single factory. Neither is a film anyone makes for the images.

He began a degree in economics and never finished it. He finished the other one, twenty years later: a master’s in film and media studies, with a thesis on film funding in Austria. He teaches at the same institution today.

The film that made the company

The Best of All Worlds was Adrian Goiginger’s debut. In the early 2010s Ritzberger was the only producer willing to back an unknown young director from Salzburg, and he pushed the project through everywhere it needed pushing.

The film won the Austrian Film Award and the Romy, both in the producer categories, and the Golden Austria Ticket for success at the box office. More than a hundred awards worldwide.

What can be verified

Film producer is an unregulated trade in Austria — anyone may use the title. The chamber’s CAFP certificate is the part a stranger can check in a public register.

He is also a certified green filming consultant, Evergreen Prisma, October 2022, among the first in Austria, and teaches Sustainability in Film- and Media-Production at the USTP – University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten.

What two sports explain

He fenced sabre, and soon with considerable success — national champion, Austrian academic champion, Vienna state champion, World Championship competitor, and for years part of the Austrian World Cup squad. Fencing is a question of mindset. Asked by a journalist what his goal was for the coming World Championships, he answered: to become world champion. Asked whether that was not a little unrealistic, he said: “I am not world champion now either. If I do not set myself that goal, I may as well stay at home.” And anyone who has done sport at that level knows what performance means, is prepared to put everything in, and does not give up quickly.

Then sailing. He learned it at fourteen at the holiday camp on the Wolfgangsee, the place his youth longed for and one that will never exist again in that form. What began as a pastime became a professional skipper on every ocean, an instructor and an official examiner. Here too the mindset is what counts: there is no negotiating with weather, decisions are made with the wind you have, together with a crew that may be tired and out of its depth — and in the end he has to bring them all safely into harbour. In principle it is a shooting day, it is a film: at the end everyone is sitting safely in the harbour restaurant.

Who will make your film

The day-to-day production business is run by Marie-Christine Riffert, Meichen Liu and Elisabeth Uhl. If you are bringing an international production to Austria, they are the people you will work with.

Wolfgang Ritzberger writes, directs and advises. He comes in where a project needs the commercial and legal frame or the green criteria. On his own films he directs.

Talk to him

For a script, a directing question, or the green criteria: office@ritzlfilm.at · LinkedIn