Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier (né Trier; 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter.

Beginning in the late-1960s as a child actor working on Danish television series Secret Summer, von Trier's career has spanned more than five decades.

Considered a major figure of the European film industry, he and his works have been variously described as ambitious and provocative, as well as technically innovative.

His films offer confrontational examinations of existential, social, psychosexual, and political issues, and deal in subjects including mercy, sacrifice, and mental health.

He frequently collaborates with the actors Jens Albinus, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgård.

Von Trier co-created the avant-garde filmmaking movement Dogme 95 alongside fellow director Thomas Vinterberg and co-founded the Danish film production company Zentropa, the films from which have sold more than 350million tickets and garnered eight Academy Award nominations.

Von Trier has been the subject of criticisms and controversies.

Cannes Film Festival, in addition to awarding his films on numerous occasions, once listed him as persona non grata for making a Nazism joke during an interview; animal harm on Manderlay's set, and graphic violence and unsimulated sex in some of his films have drawn criticism; and he has been accused of mistreatment and negligence towards actresses during the filming process, including Björk and Nicole Kidman.

Born Lars Trier in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, north of Copenhagen, his parents are Inger Høst and Fritz Michael Hartmann (her former boss at Denmark's Ministry of Social Affairs and a World War II resistance fighter).

In 1984, The Element of Crime, von Trier's breakthrough film, received twelve awards at seven international festivals including the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes, and a nomination for the Palme d'Or.

The film's slow, non-linear pace, innovative and multi-leveled plot design, and dark dreamlike visual effects combine to create an allegory for traumatic European historical events.

This pattern began with The Element of Crime (1984), the first of the Europa trilogy, which illuminated traumatic periods in Europe both in the past and the future.

It also includes Epidemic.

Von Trier's next film, Epidemic (1987), was also shown at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, and featured two story lines that ultimately collide: the chronicle of two filmmakers (played by vonTrier and screenwriter Niels Vørse) in the midst of developing a new project, and a dark science fiction tale of a futuristic plague – the very film von Trier and Vørsel are depicted making.

He next directed Medea (1988) for television, based on a screenplay by Carl Th. Dreyer and starring Udo Kier, which won the Jean d'Arcy prize in France.

Von Trier has referred to his films as falling into thematic and stylistic trilogies.

He received his surname from Høst's husband, Ulf Trier, whom he believed to be his biological father until 1989.

He studied film theory at the University of Copenhagen and film direction at the National Film School of Denmark.

At 25, he won two Best School Film awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools for Nocturne and Last Detail.

The same year, he added the nobiliary particle "von" to his name, possibly as a satirical homage to the equally self-invented titles of directors Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg, and saw his graduation film Images of Liberation released as a theatrical feature.

In 1990 he also directed the music video for the song "Bakerman" by Laid Back.

He completed the trilogy in 1991 with Europa (released as Zentropa in the US), which won the Prix duJury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, and picked up awards at other major festivals.

Seeking financial independence and creative control over their projects, in 1992 vonTrier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen founded the film production company Zentropa Entertainment, which has sold more than 350 million tickets and was nominated for multiple Academy Awards as of 2016.

Named after a fictional railway company in Europa, their most recent film at the time, Zentropa has produced many movies other than Trier's own, as well as several television series.

To make money for his newly founded company, vonTrier made The Kingdom (Danish title Riget, 1994) and The KingdomII (RigetII, 1997), a pair of miniseries recorded in the Danish national hospital, the name "Riget" being a colloquial name for the hospital known as Rigshospitalet (lit. The Kingdom's Hospital) in Danish.

In 1995, von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg presented their manifesto for a new cinematic movement, which they called Dogme 95.

The Dogme95 concept, which led to international interest in Danish film, inspired filmmakers all over the world.

It required filmmakers to shirk several common techniques in modern filmmaking, such as studio lighting, sets, costumes, and non-diegetic music.

In 1996 von Trier conducted an unusual theatrical experiment in Copenhagen involving 53 actors, which he titled Psychomobile1: The World Clock.

This trilogy consists of Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998), and Dancer in the Dark (2000).

While all three films are sometimes associated with the Dogme 95 movement, The Idiots was the only one to meet all the necessary criteria to be "certified" as such.

Breaking the Waves won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and featured Emily Watson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Its grainy images, and hand-held photography, pointed towards Dogme95 but violated several of the manifesto's rules.

It has also produced hardcore sex films: Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999), HotMen CoolBoyz (2000), and All About Anna (2005).

A projected third season of the series was derailed by the death in 1998 of Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Dr. Helmer, and that of Kirsten Rolffes, who played Mrs. Drusse, in 2000, two of the major characters, which led to the series' cancellation.

A documentary chronicling the project was directed by Jesper Jargil, and was released in 2000 with the title De Udstillede (The Exhibited).

Von Trier achieved international success with his Golden Heart trilogy.

Each film in the trilogy is about naive heroines who maintain their "golden hearts" despite the tragedies they experience.

This video was re-used in 2006 by the English DJ and artist Shaun Baker in his remake of the song.

In 2008, together with their fellow Dogme directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, vonTrier and Thomas Vinterberg received the European film award for European Achievement in World Cinema.