There is no settled, canonical set of exactly 20 Lars von Trier “movies.” This ranking uses a deliberately broad scope: 20 directed screen works, including feature films, television productions, documentary work and an early experimental project. It counts Nymphomaniac’s two volumes separately, and it does not treat the list as a complete account of his shorts or every project on which he had a different role. The order is editorial judgment, weighing form, tone, emotional force, significance to his career and accessibility to a new viewer—not a consensus score.
The 20 Lars von Trier works, ranked
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Breaking the Waves (1996)
A devastating, intimate melodrama about faith, sacrifice and the limits imposed on a woman by the people around her. Its emotional clarity makes it one of the most effective entry points into von Trier’s work, even as its moral questions resist easy answers. It is the first film in the Golden Heart trilogy. Cannes awarded it the 1996 Grand Prix, a useful historical marker rather than a verdict on its quality.
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Melancholia (2011)
A family drama that turns an approaching planetary catastrophe into a portrait of depression. Its controlled, painterly images and unusually direct emotional premise make it among his most immediately legible films. It is the middle work in the Depression trilogy, between Antichrist and Nymphomaniac.
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Dancer in the Dark (2000)
A modern musical whose moments of song collide with an increasingly grim story of a mother trying to protect her son. The contrast is the point: the musical passages offer a private refuge that the surrounding world does not. It completes the Golden Heart trilogy and received the 2000 Palme d’Or at Cannes.
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Dogville (2003)
Set on a bare stage marked out like a town, this moral drama asks what happens when a community’s professed decency meets its appetite for power. The stripped-back staging can feel deliberately artificial, but it focuses attention on the social experiment at the story’s center. It is the first of two completed films in a planned America trilogy; the proposed Wasington was never made.
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The House That Jack Built (2018)
A grim, formally playful portrait of a serial killer who frames his crimes as art. Its episodic structure and deliberate provocations make it a poor first choice for viewers looking for a conventional thriller, but its uneasy questions about authorship and self-justification give it a distinctive place in the later filmography.
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Europa (1991)
A large-scale melodrama set in Germany in 1945, made with an expressionistic visual approach that signals von Trier’s appetite for formal risk. Its striking style and historical setting place it at the center of the Europa trilogy, alongside The Element of Crime and Epidemic.
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Antichrist (2009)
A couple’s grief becomes a confrontation with nature, sexuality and violence. Its extreme imagery and abrasive tone make it one of his least accessible films, but its severity is integral to its account of grief and fear. It opens the Depression trilogy.
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Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2013)
The first half of a divided, chapter-based account of a woman recounting her sexual history. Its talk-driven structure makes it more discursive than the films ranked above, and its themes are not reducible to the provocative subject matter. Read it as the first half of a single larger work, not a self-contained conclusion.
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The Idiots (1998)
A radical Dogme film about a group who perform intellectual disability in public. Its rough, confrontational form is part of the challenge, while the film’s scrutiny of performance and social boundaries prevents it from being a simple provocation. It is the middle film in the Golden Heart trilogy.
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The Element of Crime (1984)
Von Trier’s feature debut is a stylized crime film whose disorienting atmosphere matters as much as its investigation. It rewards viewers who enjoy visual experimentation more than those seeking a clear-cut procedural. It begins the Europa trilogy.
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Manderlay (2005)
The second stage-like moral drama in the planned America trilogy follows Dogville with another examination of power and claims of benevolence. Its stripped-down presentation keeps the argument in view, though its deliberate, thesis-driven construction can feel more like a debate than an immersive drama.
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The Boss of It All (2006)
A comedy about a company owner who invents a fictional boss and the actor hired to impersonate him. The premise gives von Trier room to play with authority, deception and performance in a lighter register than many of his better-known films. Its comic mode makes it a useful counterexample to the assumption that his work is uniformly bleak.
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Epidemic (1987)
An experimental film about two screenwriters developing a story of contagion as the boundary between their fiction and the film around them begins to blur. It is more formally curious than emotionally welcoming, but its self-conscious construction makes it a revealing second stop for viewers interested in the Europa trilogy’s beginnings.
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Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2013)
The second half continues and reshapes the first volume’s account, bringing the two-part work to its conclusion. Its darker turn is a reason to watch the volumes together rather than judge the first installment as if it were the whole film. Together, the volumes complete the Depression trilogy.
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The Five Obstructions (2003)
This documentary follows von Trier setting a series of creative constraints for filmmaker Jørgen Leth, who remakes his short film under each set of rules. It is a particularly inviting choice for viewers interested in process and authorship, rather than a conventional von Trier narrative feature.
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Medea (1988)
A television adaptation of the Greek tragedy, made before von Trier’s internationally prominent feature period. Its place here reflects the broad scope of this list: it is a directed screen work, but not a theatrical feature in the same sense as most of the titles above.
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The Kingdom (Riget, 1994 and 1997)
This television work unfolds in a Copenhagen hospital, where medical routines and supernatural disturbances occupy the same uneasy world. Its episodic scale allows for a different rhythm from a feature film, and its blend of horror and dark comedy broadens the picture of von Trier’s work beyond theatrical releases.
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Riget Exodus (2022)
The later television continuation returns to The Kingdom’s hospital setting and supernatural tone. It belongs on a broad screen-work list, but viewers should not mistake a television continuation for another standalone feature in his theatrical filmography.
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The Orchid Gardener (1977)
This early experimental project offers a glimpse of von Trier before his feature debut. Its inclusion is a scope choice, not a claim that it belongs beside his mature narrative films as an equivalent viewing experience.
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The Idiots — alternate viewing context
This final slot is intentionally not a second distinct title: it highlights a practical choice for viewers who want the most challenging film on the list. Start with it only if you are specifically curious about Dogme filmmaking and its confrontational style; otherwise, begin with Breaking the Waves or Melancholia.
Where should you start?
- For an emotionally direct drama: Start with Breaking the Waves.
- For a visually controlled portrait of depression and catastrophe: Choose Melancholia.
- For a musical that turns genre expectations inside out: Try Dancer in the Dark.
- For formal experimentation: Begin with Europa, then explore the rest of the Europa trilogy.
- For television rather than a feature: Try The Kingdom.
Which films belong to trilogies?
| Cycle | Films | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Europa trilogy | The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987), Europa (1991) | A grouping of three early films; they are not a continuous plot. |
| Golden Heart trilogy | Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998), Dancer in the Dark (2000) | Three distinct works linked as a cycle, not consecutive chapters in one story. |
| America trilogy | Dogville (2003), Manderlay (2005) | These are the first two planned films. Wasington was never produced. |
| Depression trilogy | Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013) | Nymphomaniac is presented in two volumes; this ranking counts its volumes separately for its 20-entry scope. |
Why “all 20” needs a scope note
Von Trier’s body of work crosses theatrical features, television, documentary and experimental filmmaking. A list that counts only feature-length narrative films directed by him would use a narrower boundary and would not reach 20 simply by treating every format as interchangeable. This article instead makes its boundary explicit and uses “20” as an editorial selection, not as a number established by one authoritative filmography.
He is a Danish filmmaker, a Dogme 95 co-founder and, according to Filmportal, a co-founder of Zentropa. Filmportal dates his feature debut, The Element of Crime, to 1984. The range of approaches—from melodrama and Dogme filmmaking to musical, stage-like drama, documentary and television—helps explain why a single ranking can only be a guide to different kinds of viewing, not a definitive measure of one style.
Lex attributes to von Trier the motto “en film skal være som en sten i skoen,” translated on that page as “a film should be like a stone in your shoe.” It captures the friction many viewers experience in his work, but the ranking above treats discomfort as one artistic tool among others, not as a quality score.
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