Lars Von Trier

Lars von Trier (b. 1956, Copenhagen) is a Danish filmmaker whose Dogme 95 manifesto — co-authored with Thomas Vinterberg — and the films it inspired helped reshape European art cinema in the late 1990s. Dogme's Vow of Chastity demanded shooting on location, with handheld cameras and no added lighting or sound, producing a rawness that influenced independent filmmaking internationally.

His own films — including Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2003), Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), and Nymphomaniac (2013) — constitute one of the most formally ambitious and emotionally extreme bodies of work in contemporary cinema.