With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.
Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.
During a family gathering, a celebration for their father's 60th birthday, the eldest son presents a speech that reveals some shocking secrets.
Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.
A French woman falls in love with a Yugoslavian man, not realizing that he is an illegal immigrant.
Undiagnosed, untreated and generally untethered schizophrenic Julien lives with his pregnant younger sister Pearl, anorexic would-be wrestler brother Chris, sympathetic grandmother, and severely depressed German father.
Kira and Mads try to work out their marriage, after Kira has been two years in a mental institution, but is she really ready for the real world?
Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law´s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.
A story of a filmmaker who falls in love with a woman he interviews for his film. The film presents the evolution of a relationship which shifts from the objective to the subjective, and from lies to truth.
Peter and Chris, two young American friends in their late 20s, go from South Dakota to California on a scooter, and as they travel across the American landscape they see their country through different eyes, ranging from Peter's cynically nihilistic point of view, to Chris' high expectations and romantic notions of the United States.
A man introduces his new girlfriend to his best buddy.
Story of a video camera that goes on an adventure around the world. It's stolen, pawned, bought and generally goes in and out of bedrooms, shoots commercials, follows the life of an average ordinary video camera that goes around the planet until it winds up in the hands of filmmaker Richard Martini. This film has been designated at Dogma #15 by the Danish film group Dogme95.
In 1984, the former mayor of a small upstate New York town was found dead in his car with a young girl. In the aftermath, his wife and his adopted daughter have to make sense of this situation, while a detective from out of town tries to solve the case.
A bittersweet and heartfelt story about going back. In the twenty-four hours before their 20th high school reunion, five friends, a younger brother and a mysterious photojournalist are reunited by determined Mayor Margaret to remember the good times of 1981
Fabián, a magician from Buenos Aires, saves his money from weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs, and uses a hidden camera to document a week-long trip to the Falkland Islands where he has a patriotic plan: to impregnate a British woman. If 500 Argies do this annually, the islands will soon be overrun with children belonging to both cultures.
P. is a little girl's imaginary friend who lives inside the wall of her room. But one day he magically materialises and so must learn to live in the world like everyone else - a world where he is met with suspicion and hate but also with wonder and love.
The entire extended family is happily on its way to a nostalgic Christmas at a rented cabin in the mountains. The cabin becomes cramped, however, when mom and dad and four grown-up children with their respective families, a dog and in-laws from Poland squeeze inside the frozen cabin walls in 30-below-zero weather.
The story of a young playwright and his tumultuous affair with his director's wife.
A documentary crew enters a drama school in Brussels to examine the controversial method of one of its teachers: the Open Door method. The great atmosphere soon disappear as ill-feelings settle.
Two stories run on parallel lines in a nocturnal Rome. Marcello is an easygoing sixty-five-year-old film producer trying to convince a beautiful actress to accept a part in a film. The other protagonist is a group of petty criminals and illegal immigrants who pass the night stealing, taking drugs, having sex and drinking. Marcello talks about his experience working with Fellini and Mastroianni during the wonderful years of DOLCE VITA; this strongly contrasts the city experienced by the immigrants.
