Lars von Trier Filmography

The Boss of it All

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Fridrik Thór Fridriksson, Benedikt Erlingsson, Iben Hjejle

Synopsis: Lars von Trier's black comedy The Boss of It All (Direktoren for det Hele, 2006) concerns an IT company owner who - in need of a figurehead to "hide behind" when confronted with employee problems - invented the personage of a CEO during the startup period for his corporation. The scheme worked for Read More

Erik Nietzsche: The Early Years

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jonatan Spang, David Dencik, Therese Damsgaard, Carl Martin Norén, Mille Hoffmeyer Lehfeldt, Søren Pilmark

Synopsis: Director Jacob Thuesen takes a satirical look at the life of an aspiring filmmaker in this story of an emerging director who remains doggedly determined to realize his vision on the big screen despite the lofty pretension and swelling egos of his useless instructors and eccentric fellow students. Read More

Occupations

Crew: Director

To Each His Own Cinema

Crew: Director

Synopsis: At the time of its production, To Each His Own Cinema represented the latest arrival in a tidal wave of internationally oriented omnibus films, with no official relation between them but all produced within a few years of one another. Few could claim a roster of talent comparable to this one Read More

Manderlay

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul

Synopsis: The politics of slavery and the follies of nation-building highlight Danish director Lars von Trier's thought-provoking follow-up to the director's 2003 drama Dogville, featuring The Village's Bryce Dallas Howard in the role originally played by Nicole Kidman, and shot in the same stage-bound Read More

Dear Wendy

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Novella Nelson, Chris Owen, Alison Pill, Mark Webber

Synopsis: The contradictions of America's simultaneous love and fear of violence go under the microscope in this drama from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg. Dick (Jamie Bell) is a timid young man growing up in a mining town where he's been deemed to frail to work with the other men. Dick is given a toy Read More

The Five Obstructions

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jørgen Leth, Lars von Trier, Jacqueline Arenal, Daniel Hernández Rodríguez, Patrick Bauchau

Synopsis: Danish auteur Lars von Trier directs the documentary-of-sorts The Five Obstructions (De Fem Benspænd). In 2001, von Trier convinces veteran filmmaker Jørgen Leth to create five remakes of his 1967 short The Perfect Human. Calling himself the Obstructor, von Trier orders Leth to make his films in Read More

Dogville

Crew: Camera Operator, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Nicole Kidman, John Hurt, Paul Bettany, Philip Baker Hall, James Caan, Stellan Skarsgård, Jeremy Davies, Chloë Sevigny

Synopsis: Set in a small fictional town in the U.S. during the 1930s, Lars von Trier's Dogville was filmed in a studio with a minimal set and features narration by John Hurt. On the run from a group of gangsters, Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the small mining town of Dogville. Town philosopher Tom Edison Read More

Epreuves d'Artistes

Actors: Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Benigni, Bernardo Bertolucci

Kingdom Hospital

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Andrew McCarthy, Diane Ladd, Bruce Davison, Ed Begley, Jr., Jack Coleman

Synopsis: Based upon the critically acclaimed Lars von Trier miniseries Riget (The Kingdom), this American remake from fright master Stephen King unfolds over 15 hours and centers on the creepy goings-on at a hospital known as The Kingdom. Andrew McCarthy leads the cast as Dr. Hook, one of the physicians at Read More

Medea

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Shooting entirely on analog video, Lars von Trier directs the made-for-Danish-TV version of the ancient Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides. The screenplay is based on a 1960s adaptation written by master Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer that was never produced during his lifetime. The Read More

Dogville Confessions

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Lars von Trier, Stellan Skarsgård, Ben Gazzara, Lauren Bacall

De Lutrede

Actors: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Kristian Levring, Mogens Rukov

Synopsis: In 1995, speaking at a conference held to celebrate the 100th birthday of the cinema, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier gave a speech in which he decried the increased technical sophistication of filmmaking, which he believed had come at the expense of the art of storytelling. Von Trier declared Read More

Dancer in the Dark

Crew: Camera Operator, Director, Screenwriter, Songwriter

Actors: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Joel Grey

Synopsis: Reportedly the third in acclaimed director Lars von Trier's "Golden Hearts" trilogy (preceded by Breaking the Waves and The Idiots), this film is a hip reworking of the classic Hollywood Musical, starring international pop diva Bjork. Set somewhere in rural Washington state, Czech immigrant Selma Read More

The Idiots

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Bodil Jorgensen, Jens Albinus, Louise Hassing, Troels Lyby, Nikolaj Kaas

Synopsis: Lars von Trier wrote (in four days) and directed this Danish comedy-drama about a group of Copenhagen eccentrics who find a therapeutic release and confront apathy via unacceptable, idiotic behavior which they call "spazzing." Stoffer (Jens Albinus) is supposed to be selling his uncle's house but Read More

Short 7: Utopia

The Kingdom II

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Kirsten Rolffes, Holger Juul Hansen, Søren Pilmark, Ghita Nørby

Synopsis: Morten Arnfred and Lars von Trier's second chapter in the ongoing Danish television series The Kingdom chronicles the further misadventures of the staff and patients of an ultramodern Copenhagen hospital located atop an ancient, haunted swamp. The film opens with Judith (Birgitte Raaberg) giving Read More

Breaking the Waves

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, Adrian Rawlins

Synopsis: With Breaking The Waves, director Lars von Trier fashions an often disturbing tale of the singular power of love. Bess (the Oscar-nominated Emily Watson) is a naïve, borderline simple young woman who lives in a Scottish coastal town ruled by the religious doctrine of its council of elders. Read More

The Kingdom

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Kirsten Rolffes, Holger Juul Hansen, Ghita Nørby, Udo Kier

Synopsis: Originally created for Danish television, Morten Arnfred and Lars von Trier's supernatural thriller The Kingdom chronicles the bizarre occurrences at the title hospital, the largest and most respected hospital in the country. While the series deals with such real-life complications as murder Read More

Zentropa

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier, Erik Mork

Synopsis: Europa (retitled Zentropa for the American release) is an hallucinatory Danish film set in postwar Germany. Jean-Marc Barr plays a young German who aspires for a job as a street conductor. But this is no mere "Joe Job;" Barr's adventures on the line are designed as a metaphor for the emergence of Read More

En verden til forskel

Actors: Boguslaw Linda, Kirsten Lehfeldt

Synopsis: In postwar Europe, Jens (Adam Koslowski) is having a difficult time. He is of Polish extraction, has a Danish name, and is attending a strict boarding school in Yugoslavia. He heads off to Denmark, which is where his Polish father (Boguslaw Linda) currently lives, and tries to help his father, who Read More

Epidemic

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Lars von Trier, Niels Vørsel, Udo Kier

Synopsis: Director Lars von Trier stars in a double role in this experimental horror fantasy. He pretentiously portrays a director who spends a year and a half preparing to make a horror film with help from a government grant. In the second part, he plays a young physician who unknowingly has a plague virus Read More

The Element of Crime

Crew: Camera Operator, Director, Producer, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Me Me Lai

Synopsis: A detective plagued by headaches goes to a hypnotist and relives his investigation into a serial killer case in Lars von Trier's first feature, The Element of Crime. Fisher (Michael Elphick), a retired policeman, returns to Europe at the behest of his mentor, Osborne (Esmond Knight of The Red Shoes Read More

Befrielsesbilleder

Crew: Director, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this thought-provoking graduate film of student Lars von Trier, the behavior of Danish resistance fighters at the end of World War II is called into question by documentary footage of them making street arrests and by fictional enactments of crimes. In one sequence, a captive German officer Read More