Lars von Trier is a Danish director born in Copenhagen, co-founder of the Dogme 95 movement and one of the most deliberately provocative and formally inventive filmmakers in contemporary cinema. Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark established his signature blend of raw emotional intensity and formal experimentation, the latter winning the Palme d'Or, while Dogville, staged almost entirely on a bare soundstage with chalk outlines instead of sets, showed his willingness to strip cinema down to its theatrical essentials. Antichrist, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac, often grouped as a loose trilogy on depression, formed some of his most personally revealing and formally audacious later work, frequently built around intense female suffering. Von Trier's consistent formal provocation and unflinching examination of extreme psychological and physical suffering have made him one of the most controversial and influential auteurs in contemporary European cinema. Read more