The ‘Antichrist’ Cometh…to Germany

No doubt drawing inspiration from Hansel and Gretel, Lars Von Trier (Dancing in the Dark) has secured funding from the North Rhine – Westphalia film subsidy Filmstiftung for his new film, Antichrist. The English language move is set in nature and based on the theory that is was Satan, not God, who created the world.
With a reported $1.4 million to play with, the project will film in German forests, marking the first time Von Trier has worked in the country. The phobic auteur suffers from an intense fear of flying which prevents him from tackling foreign locales.

Anders Thomas Jensen who has written tons of Danish treats and has most recently directed The Green
Butchers and Adam’s Apples co-write the script with Von Trier. The film follows a couple that abscond to an isolated cabin after the death of their young child. While the wife drifts further into neurosis and depression, the husband, an experienced psychologist, attempts to draw her out with therapeutic experiments. While the experiments are promising at first, they soon devolve, with disturbing results. Von Trier has been quoted as saying the film is a “psychological thriller that evolves into a horror film”. Just how Satan likes it!

The funding “Antichrist” received is illustrative of the artistic cooperation the EU supports. The film is set in Germany, written by two Danes, produced by Von Trier’s Zentropa Entertainment (also Danish) with France’s Liberator2/Slot Machine and Italy’s Lucky Red production companies in tow.
Filming for “Antichrist” will begin this summer, with a possible release date in 2009.