Born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lars von Trier (the "von" was adopted during his stay at the Danish Film School) graduated from the Danish Film School in 1983 with his short film IMAGES OF RELIEF (BEFRIELSESBILLEDER) which won the Best Film award at the Munich Film Festival the following year. He had his real breakthrough with the FORBRYDELSENS ELEMENT (1984) (THE ELEMENT OF CRIME), an expressionistic, yellow-tinted and post-modern film with a psychological theme, for which he won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. THE ELEMENT OF CRIME was followed by the fiasco EPIDEMIC in 1987; however von Trier made a comeback with his 1991 film EUROPA (1991) (US title: ZENTROPA), which won him the Jury Prize as well as the Technical Grand Prize and Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, taking place in post-war Germany, is a great example of a post-apocalyptical film, with a wired hypnotic architecture and a centralisation on the human morale, responsibility and love. However, it is probably his later movies which von Trier is going to be remembered for. His BREAKING THE WAVES (1996), for which he won the Jury Prize at Cannes, was the director's first film (in a trilogy) that centered on the female sex. The film is perhaps one of the world's most emotional motion pictures, leaving not an eye dry when it ends, and the viewer realizes that love, indeed, is the greatest power. With DANCER IN THE DARK (2000), he made a melodrama about an east European woman, who sacrifices everything, literally, to save her son from getting the same eye-illness she herself suffers from, and thereby going blind. The film was one of the first motion pictures in the world to be filmed with entirely digital equipment. Icelandic singer-superstar Björk, who also made all the music, starred as Selma, the principal character. DANCER IN THE DARK won the 2000 Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. If not for his movies, von Trier will be remembered for his TV soap "The Kingdom" ("Riget") from 1994; a soap in which he blended his own cinematic style with a David Lynch-like surrealistic story about ghosts, God and Satan. It was "The Kingdom" which made Lars von Trier a household name in Denmark. Together with producer Peter Ålbæk Jensen, von Trier owns Zentropa Enterprizes, which produces his own fims, as well as many others. In 1995, Von Trier's dying mother (a former civil service worker named Inger Høst) told her son on her deathbed that the man he believed was his father (Ulf Trier, another ministry worker) was not in fact his father. She explained that she wanted a man with "artistic genes," and Fritz Michael Hartmann, her former employer, seemed to fit the bill. Following her death, von Trier tracked down Hartmann, then a 90-year-old man who was a member of an illustrious family of Danish composers. After four combative meetings, Hartmann told von Trier that, if he wanted to speak to him again, he could do it through his lawyer. In 1996, von Trier broke up with his pregnant wife, Cæcilia Holbek Treir, and moved in with their much younger babysitter, Bente Frøge. They were married in 1997. Other notable credits IDIOTERRE (1998), DE UDSTILLEDE / THE EXHIBITED (2000), DOGVILLE and DE FEM BENSPÆND / THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (both 2003), DEAR WENDY and MANDERLAY (both 2005), DIREKTØREN FOR DET HELE / THE BOSS OF IT ALL (2006), CHACUN SON CINÈMA... (segment: "Occupations") and DE UNGE ÅR: ERIK NIETZSCHE SAGAEN DEL 1 / THE EARLY YEARS ERIK NIETSCHE, PART 1 (both 2007), and WASINGTON (announced for 2009). One of von Trier's projects is a film that takes a 3-minute shot every year on different locations all over Europe over a period of 33 years. The project started back in 1991, so its premiere is expected to be in the year 2024.  Nominated for Achievement in Music (Original Song) 2000: DANCER IN THE DARK "I've Seen It All" - Lyric (w. Sjon Sigurdsson) 1 nomination