Antichrist

Lars von Trier's Antichrist opened at Cannes 2009 and won Charlotte Gainsbourg the Best Actress prize, a result that produced predictable controversy, with one festival jury member resigning over it. The European Film Award for Best Cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle) followed. The film opens the loose Depression Trilogy that Trier would extend with Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac (2013), three films Trier made after a severe depressive episode and after publicly committing to confront his own preoccupations on screen.

A grief-stricken therapist (Willem Dafoe, named only He) and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg, named only She) retreat to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest woods (Eden) after the death of their young son. He intends to use therapeutic exposure to lead her through her trauma. What begins as guided meditation slowly becomes one of the most extreme combinations of horror, theological provocation and physical violence in recent European cinema.

The film's prologue and epilogue (both shot in monochrome slow-motion to the Handel aria Lascia ch'io pianga) are among the most beautiful sustained sequences Trier has ever filmed. The middle section divided audiences as completely as anything in 21st-century European cinema. Gainsbourg's performance, regardless of one's response to the film around it, is widely accepted as one of the most physically committed of her career.