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. Broke up with his pregnant wife and moved in with their (much younger) babysitter. [1996] Added 'von' to his name because his peers at the Danish Film School called him so. Von Trier's mother, a civil service worker named Inger Høst, confessed shortly before her death that his real father was not Ulf Trier (another ministry worker) but rather her employer, Fritz Michael Hartmann; she explained she wanted a man with "artistic genes," and Hartmann, a member of an illustrious family of Danish composers including Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann and Niels Viggo Bentzon, seemed to fit the bill. Nephew of filmmaker Børge Høst. Helped form a collective known as Dogme 95 with a group of other filmmakers. The collective agreed to make films following certain rules, such as using only hand held cameras and shooting only on location. 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. Steven Spielberg offered him the chance to direct a film in America after he saw Europa but von Trier turned the script down. 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 is working on a film project called Dimension, starring Udo Kier, taking a 3 minute shot every year around Christmas on different locations all over Europe over a period of 33 years. The project started back in 1991, so its premiere is expected to be in the year 2024. 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. Has never visited the US. Added the "von" to his birth name (Lars Trier) as an homage to director Josef von Sternberg.