Dogma 95, the avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish director Lars von Trier and three of his fellow directors, was launched in 1995 at an elite cinema conference in Paris—when von Trier was called upon to speak about the future of film but instead showered the audience with pamphlets announcing the new movement and its manifesto. A refreshingly original critical commentary on the director and his practice, Playing the Waves is a paramount addition to one of new media’s most provocative genres: games and gaming. Playing the Waves cleverly puns on the title of one of von Trier’s most famous features and argues that Dogma 95, like much of the director’s low-budget realist productions, is a game that takes cinema beyond the traditional confines of film aesthetics and dramatic rules. Simons articulates the ways in which von Trier redefines the practice of filmmaking as a rule-bound activity, and stipulates the forms and structures of games von Trier brings to bear on his films, as well as the sobering lessons he draws from economic and evolutionary game theory. Much like the director’s films, this fascinating volume takes the traditional point of view of film theory and film aesthetics to the next level and demonstrates we have much to learn from the perspective of game studies and game theory.

The films of Lars von Trier offer unique opportunities for thinking deeply about how Philosophy and Cinema speak to one another. The book addresses von Trier’s films in order of their release. The earlier chapters discuss his Golden Heart trilogy and USA: Land of Opportunities series by addressing issues of potential misogyny, ethical critique, and racial justice. The later chapters focus on his Depression Trilogy and address the undermining of gender binaries, the psychoanalytic meaning of the sacrifice of children and depression, and philosophical questions provoked by the depiction of the end of the world. Taken together, the volume explores the topics of Philosophical Psychology, Social Theory, Political Theory, Theories of the Self, Philosophy of Race, and Feminist Thought, and opens a conversation about von Trier’s important work.

This book offers a bold and dynamic examination of Lars von Trier’s cinema by interweaving philosophy and theology with close attention to aesthetics through style and narrative. It explores the prophetic voice of von Trier's films, juxtaposing them with Ezekiel's prophecy and Ricoeur’s symbols of evil, myth, and hermeneutics of revelation. The films of Lars von Trier are categorized as extreme cinema, inducing trauma and emotional rupture rarely paralleled, while challenging audiences to respond in new ways. This volume argues that the spiritual, biblical content of the films holds a key to understanding von Trier’s oeuvre of excess. Spiritual conflict is the mechanism that unpacks the films’ notorious excess with explosive, centrifugal force. By confronting the spectator with spiritual conflict through evil, von Trier's films truthfully and prophetically expose the spectator’s complicity in personal and structural evil, forcing self-examination through theological themes, analogous to the prophetic voice of the transgressive Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, his prophecy, and its form of delivery. Placed in context with the prophetic voices of Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, O’Connor, and Tarkovsky, this volume offers a theoretical framework beyond von Trier. It will be of great interest to scholars in Film Studies, Film and Philosophy, Film and Theology.

Lars von Trier built a reputation as a provocateur from the start—but in the late 2000s, he entered an even more inflammatory phase. Amid Cannes controversies, Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013–14), and The House That Jack Built (2018) brandished the cinematic virtuosity von Trier once banned under the Dogme 95 Manifesto while subjecting audiences to “extreme” cinema. Following von Trier’s experience of clinical depression in 2006 and 2007, these films took an aggressively personal and retrospective turn against the backdrop of the director’s controversy-courting public appearances. Playing against widespread assumptions, Linda Badley takes a reparative approach, offering an in-depth examination of these four films and the contexts that produced them. Drawing on numerous interviews with the director and his collaborators as well as inside access to archival materials, she provides a thorough and comprehensive account of von Trier’s preproduction and creative process. Highlighting a transmedial turn, Badley tracks von Trier’s artistic touchstones from Wagner, Proust, and the Marquis de Sade to Scandinavian erotic cinema and serial killer genre tropes. She considers his portrayals of mental illness and therapy, gender and sexuality, nature and extinction, shedding light on the thematic concerns that unite these films as a distinct cycle. Offering nuanced readings of these films, the book emphasizes the significance of von Trier’s work for current critical and philosophical debates, showing how they engage with notions of the Anthropocene, “dark ecology,” and the postcinematic.

This book discusses the figure of Woman in Lars von Trier’s distinctive cinematic productions from 1996 to 2014. It takes the notorious legacy of violence against women in von Trier’s cinema beyond the perceived gender division, elevating the director’s image above being a mere provocateur. By raising fundamental questions about woman, sexuality, and desire, Elbeshlawy shows that Trier’s cinematic Woman is an attempt at creating an image of a genderless subject that is not inhibited by the confines of ideology and culture. But this attempt is perennially ill-fated. And it is this failure that not only fosters viewing enjoyment but also gives the films their political importance, elevating them above both commendations and condemnations of feminist discourse.

Lars von Trier is the most controversial figure of contemporary European cinema. This volume is the first book to analyse in depth the changes he has brought to modern film. Since founding the back-to-basics Dogme philosophy of filmmaking in 1995, von Trier's name has become a by-word for taboo-breaking cinema. As a director, he has courted media controversy through films such as The Idiots (1998), with its unsimulated sex and non-conformist politics, and through his complex relationships with actresses such as Bj'rk and Nicole Kidman, from whom he coaxed career-best performances in Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Dogville (2003) respectively. Analysing these films as well as recent works such as The Five Obstructions (2004) from a psychoanalytic perspective, it forges a new understanding of the founder of Dogme 95 as a great democratiser of cinema in the digital age, presenting von Trier as one of the most daring cinematic exponents of postmodern politics and satire.

This volume provides an overview of von Trier's career while focusing on his more recent work, including the Gold Heart Trilogy, the USA Trilogy, and individual projects such as the comedy The Boss of It All and the horror psychodrama Antichrist. The author draws on a range of cultural references and critical approaches, including genre, gender, and cultural studies, performance theory, and trauma culture and includes two interviews with Trier.