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 at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, Forbrydelsens element. 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 and Europa have been equally ambitious both thematically and visually, though his international fame is most likely to be based on The Kingdom, a TV soap opera blending hospital drama, ghost story and Twin Peaks-style surrealism that was so successful in Denmark that it was released internationally as a 280-minute theatrical feature.


In 1995, his dying mother told her son on her deathbed that the man he believed was his father was, in fact, was not. Following her death, he tracked down his biological father, a 90-year-old man who after four combative meetings told him that, if he wanted to speak to him again, he could do it through his lawyer. Added 'von' to his name because his peers at the Danish Film School called him so. Nephew of filmmaker Børge Høst. The year von Trier won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, he almost did not attend the ceremony. He has so many phobias, he could only make the trip in a specially outfitted trailer. He was awarded UNICEF's 'Cinema for Peace Award' at the 2004 Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival). He got the award because almost all of his films deal with subjects like mercy and ethics. He was scheduled to direct the four operas of Wagner's Ring at the 2006 edition of the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, but withdrew from the project in 2004 and stated through the festival that he felt that it would exceed his powers and that he did not feel able to fulfil his own ambitions. Added the "von" to his birth name (Lars Trier) as an homage to director Josef von Sternberg. Has said that one of his favourite films is The Philadelphia Story (1940).