With his dazzling first three features, Lars von Trier sought nothing less than to map the soul of Europe—its troubled past, anxious present, and uncertain future. Linked by a fascination with hypnotic states and the mesmeric possibilities of cinema, the films that make up the Europe Trilogy—The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa—filter the continent’s turbulent history, guilt, and traumas through the Danish provocateur’s audacious deconstructions of genres including film noir, melodrama, horror, and science fiction. Above all, they are bravura showcases for von Trier’s hallucinatory visuals, with each shot a tour de force of technical invention and dark imagination.
Lars von Trier's Europa trilogy about a future Europe and it's challenges.
The Europa trilogy is a film trilogy written and directed by Lars von Trier, comprising his three feature films The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991). The films are not a narrative trilogy, but rather are linked by common themes and stylistic explorations. The overarching subject of the trilogy may be taken to be the social crisis of postwar Europe. Each of the three films follows a character whose idealistic actions ultimately perpetuate the very problem he seeks to solve.
Europe Trilogy
Official List