Dogville

Lars von Trier's Dogville opened in competition at Cannes 2003 and was the first of his loose USA (Land of Opportunities trilogy (followed by Manderlay in 2005; the third film, Wasington, was never made). The film's structural conceit) staged on a single black soundstage with chalk-line outlines for buildings, no real walls, and the entire camera-grid visible, was developed in collaboration with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and is among the most-discussed formal choices of 2000s art cinema.

Grace (Nicole Kidman, in the role von Trier had originally written for Lauren Bacall, Bacall plays the elderly Ma Ginger instead) is a fugitive woman who arrives in the tiny Rocky Mountain village of Dogville in the late 1930s and offers her labour to the residents in exchange for shelter from the gangsters pursuing her. Paul Bettany plays Tom, the would-be writer who advocates for her acceptance; James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, Stellan Skarsgård and Chloë Sevigny anchor the village ensemble. The film is structured as nine chapters and a prologue, each introduced by John Hurt's voice-over narration.

The film operates simultaneously as Brechtian theatrical experiment, allegory of American social hypocrisy, and sustained moral provocation. The closing chapter is among the most-debated von Trier set pieces. Kidman's central performance (physically committed, emotionally restrained) is one of the most distinguished of her career; she would not return for the second film of the trilogy, with Bryce Dallas Howard taking the role.