Lars von Trier

Cast · Director · Writer

Born

April 30, 1956 · Copenhagen, Denmark

Birth name

Lars Trier

“A film should be like a rock in the shoe.” Despite the controversy surrounding his figure, Lars von Trier is a key author in the international film scene of recent times. In 1979 he began his studies at the Danish National Film School, where he experimented and made award-winning films at festivals such as the Munich Film Festival. His first feature film as a graduate was "The Element of Crime" (1983), which won him the Grand Technical Achievement Award and the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The following two films, "Epidemic" (1987) and "Europa" (1991), complete his European Trilogy and once again earn him recognition from the French festival. Together with Thomas Vinterberg, fed up with the production scheme of the mainstream cinema and the superfluous artifice of Hollywood, they propose a return to the essential bases of the seventh art with an urgency to purify it, which is how "Dogma 95" arises; a movement and manifesto with rules in search of an avant-garde cinema in Danish hands. The result is raw, uncomfortable and transgressive works, both in form and content, such as "The Idiots" (1998) or "The Celebration" (1998) by Thomas Vinterberg. Like the rest of the vanguards, it sowed its influence and fulfilled its cycle, after which Von Trier continued to make films without respecting the self-imposed rules to the letter but maintained the conceptual spirit of the same, always advocating a controversial and risky cinema.