Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier began as a child actor on Danish television in the late 1960s, then turned behind the camera for a career now stretching five decades. In the mid-1990s he co-created Dogme 95 with Thomas Vinterberg, a stripped-down filmmaking manifesto, and co-founded Zentropa, a production company whose films have sold more than 350 million tickets and earned eight Oscar nominations. His own work - technically ambitious, deliberately provocative - examines mercy, sacrifice, mental illness, and political fault lines through images that include graphic violence and unsimulated sex. The provocations have carried consequences: Cannes banned him after a Nazism joke during an interview, animal harm occurred on the set of Manderlay, and actresses including Björk have accused him of mistreatment. He remains a major, polarizing figure in European film, working repeatedly with Jens Albinus, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, and Stellan Skarsgård.

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