Biography

Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly distinctive blend of film noir and German Expressionism with stylistic nods to Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky and Orson Welles, its combination of yellow-tinted monochrome cinematography (pierced by shafts of blue light) and doom-haunted atmosphere made it an unforgettable visual experience. His subsequent features Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) have been equally ambitious both thematically and visually, though his international fame is most likely to be based on The Kingdom (1994), a TV soap opera blending hospital drama, ghost story and Twin Peaks (1990)-style surrealism that was so successful in Denmark that it was released internationally as a 280-minute theatrical feature.
- IMDb mini biography by: Michael Brooke < michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>

Lars von Trier (the "von" was adopted during his stay at the Danish Film School) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in April 1956. He graduated from the Danish Film School in 1983 with his short film Befrielsesbilleder (1982) ("Images of Relief"), which won the Best Film award at the Munich Film Festival the following year. He had his real breakthrough with the "Forbrydelsens element" (The Element of Crime (1984)), an expressionistic, yellow-tinted and post-modern film with a psychological theme, for which he won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. "The Element of Crime" was follow by the fiasco Epidemic (1987) in 1987, but Lars von Trier made a comeback with his 1991 film _Europa_ (US title: "Zentropa"), which won him the Jury Prize as well as the Technical Grand Prize and Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival. Taking place in post-war Germany, Europa is a great example of the post-apocalyptic film, with a wired hypnotic architecture and a centralization on the human morale, responsibility, and love. However, Lars von Trier will probably be remembered for his later films. His Breaking the Waves (1996), for which he won the Jury Prize at Cannes, was the director's first film (in a trilogy) that centered on the female sex. "Breaking the Waves" is perhaps one of the worlds most emotional motion pictures, leaving not an eye dry when it ends, and the viewer realizes that love, indeed, is the greatest power. With Dancer in the Dark (2000), Lars von Trier made a melodrama about an east European woman who sacrifices everything, literally, to save her son from getting the same eye-illness she herself suffers from and thereby going blind. The film was one of the first motion pictures in the world to be filmed with entirely digital equipment. Icelandic singer-superstar Björk, who also made all the music, starred as Selma, the principal character. Dancer in the Dark won the 2000 Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. If not for his movies, Lars von Trier is going to be remembered for his TV mini-series "Riget" (The Kingdom (1994)) from 1994; in which Lars von Trier blends his own cinematic style with a David Lynch-like surrealistic story about ghosts, god and satan. It was "The Kingdom" which made Lars von Trier a household name in Denmark. Together with producer Peter Ålbæk Jensen, Lars von Trier owns Zentropa Enterprizes, which produces Lars von Triers films, as well as many others.
- IMDb mini biography by: Nikolaj Hawaleschka Stenberg <nstenberg@rocketmail.com>