Directed by Lars von Trier • 1991 • Spain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland
Starring Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier
“You will now listen to my voice . . . On the count of ten you will be in Europa . . .” So begins Max von Sydow’s opening narration to Lars von Trier’s hypnotic EUROPA (known in the U.S. as ZENTROPA), a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt. With its gorgeous black-and-white and color imagery and meticulously recreated (if then nightmarishly deconstructed) costumes and sets, EUROPA is one of the great Danish filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful works, a runaway-train ride to an oddly futuristic past.
This commentary is presented in Danish with English subtitles and features director Lars von Trier and producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen.
This documentary, produced by Same Films in 1991, covers the making of EUROPA from its conception as the third chapter in director Lars von Trier’s Europa trilogy through the painstaking storyboarding process to the film’s full-scale production.
This documentary features an interview with director Lars von Trier as well as footage from both the set of EUROPA and the film’s premiere and press conference at Cannes in 1991.
