The controversial and award-winning Danish director Lars Von Trier has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His production company Zentropa released a statement to Deadline with Von Trier’s blessing confirming the news, but underlined that he’ll continue work on his upcoming TV series The Kingdom: Exodus which is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August.
The 66-year-old director has a long career of provocative movie-making, with movies like Antichrist, Melancholia, Dancer in the Dark, and Nymphomaniac all attracting thousands of words of debate over the imagery, themes, and images of extreme physical and sexual violence.
Von Trier also saw an avalanche of bad press after his comments during a Cannes Film Festival panel in 2011 for Melancholia, where he declared “I’m a Nazi” and claimed that he understood Hitler. Despite an apology and an attempt to clarify what he meant he was promptly banned from Cannes, though they rescinded this in 2018.
Further details of Von Trier’s condition are unknown, though Deadline says he will be doing “very little press” in advance of The Kingdom: Exodus‘ release. Beyond that, we hope Von Trier can receive a course of treatment that will allow him to continue making movies for as long as possible.
Von Trier’s work is never going to be for everyone, but there are few (if any) directors doing what he does and we’d miss him if he went into early retirement.
More on this as we hear it.
