Description

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.

Special Features

4K digital restoration of Europa, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack, and 3K digital restorations of The Element of Crime and Epidemic, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks

Audio commentaries featuring director Lars von Trier and others

Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier (1997), a documentary by Stig Björkman

Interview from 2005 with von Trier about the Europe Trilogy

Making-of documentaries for all three films

Programs on the films featuring interviews with many of von Trier’s collaborators

Two short student films by von Trier: Nocturne (1980) and Images of Liberation (1982)

Danish television interview with von Trier from 1994

Trailers

English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton