Although Austria was not annexed by Germany until 1938, Jews were forbidden to work in the Austrian film industry from 1936 onwards due to pressure from Nazi Germany where Jews had been banned from film work within months of the Nazis taking power. Germany was the most important export market for Austrian films and Germany had threatened a total ban on Austrian film imports unless the Austrians complied with their demands. The only exception to this ban was, for unknown reasons, the film "Episode" (1935) directed by the Jewish Walter Reisch. 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. Some Jewish filmmakers, however, did not emigrate and many died in the Holocaust. 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.