Hugo Max is a British-Austrian filmmaker, painter and musician.

His short films have been curated in programmes at the Austrian Filmmuseum, Modern Art Oxford and London’s Close-Up Cinema and have screened at festivals in the UK, Germany, Canada, Japan and South Korea. Exhibitions of his paintings have been held at London’s Phoenix Cinema, Oxford’s Dolphin Gallery and Fusion Arts. Hugo was selected for the BaseCamp Residency at the 2025 Locarno International Film Festival and a solo exhibition of his work will be held at London’s JW3 next year. 

Hugo performs live improvised scores to silent films on solo viola. He regularly soundtracks screenings at London’s Prince Charles Cinema and Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK. In 2024 he presented his first nationwide tour accompanying a selection of classic silent horrors and thrillers and performed his second tour in spring 2025 focussing on the films of F. W. Murnau. His performances have captivated audiences at many of the UK’s most beloved cinemas including London’s BFI Southbank, Bo’ness’ Hippodrome and Oxford’s Ultimate Picture Palace. His soundtracks have been programmed as part of Bath’s Archaeo-Heritage Film Festival, Hippfest’s ‘Taste of Silents’ Season and Picturehouse reDiscover. Delving behind-the-scenes of his unique process scoring silent cinema, Hugo has appeared on BCC Radio Scotland’s ‘The Arts Mix’, Hippcast and BBC Cambridgeshire’s ‘Meet the Maker’ and has contributed articles to The Strad and Little White Lies. He has lectured on improvisation and multidisciplinary practice at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Drawn to parallels between filmmaking and collective musicmaking, Hugo has been concertmaster of Echo Ensemble, OUPhilharmonic and the Oxford Baroque Players. As a chamber musician he has performed at venues including the Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room, St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the Holywell Music Room where he curated a triptych of multidisciplinary concerts between 2022-24. 

Following his musical studies at the Purcell School and Royal College of Music Junior Department, Hugo read Fine Art at Magdalen College, Oxford and studied filmmaking at the Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film, Vienna.

Hugo’s books include Kosher Giraffe Trilogy (2024), The Dissonance Book (2023) and The Stanley Series (2020).