

The Five Obstructions(2003)
Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.

Movie: The Five Obstructions
Top 10 Billed Cast
The Perfect Woman (from Det perfekte menneske) (archive footage)
The Perfect Man (segment "Cuba")
(segment "Cuba")
Maid (segment "Brussels")
Couple (Man) (segment "Brussels")
Video Trailer The Five Obstructions
Recommendations Movies

Together(sv)
Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty(en)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

Shadows(en)
The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.

The Kingdom(da)
Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", a number of characters, staff and patients alike, encounter bizarre phenomena, both human and supernatural.

Storytelling(en)
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.

The Erotic Man(en)
The film has been ten years in the making, and over time it has grown to become what the director himself has called an artistic testament. It is simultaneously his most personal and most provocative film. A film about growing older, about losing, about the special moments one remembers, and about the director's own circling around the essence of eroticism.

Liliom(en)
A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

The Perfect Human(da)
An elegant and humorous film—in the guise of a serious anthropological treatise—spotlights "The Perfect Human," a model of the modern Dane created by our wishful thinking.

The Proposition(en)
In 1880s Australia, a lawman offers renegade Charlie Burns a difficult choice. In order to save his younger brother from the gallows, Charlie must hunt down and kill his older brother, who is wanted for rape and murder. Venturing into one of the Outback's most inhospitable regions, Charlie faces a terrible moral dilemma that can end only in violence.

Woman in the Dunes(ja)
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

EO(pl)
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.

The Idiots(da)
A mix of home-video and documentary styles about a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.

Zelig(en)
Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.

Three Colors: Blue(fr)
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.

Dancer in the Dark(en)
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles – even if just for a moment – by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Dogville(en)
When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.

The Neon Demon(en)
When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.

Mama(en)
Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.

Atomic Blonde(en)
An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
Similar Movies

Somniloquies(en)
Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

The Dinosaur(fi)
Acclaimed Finnish director Rauni Mollberg made several scandalous yet widely appreciated films. Former co-worker Veikko Aaltonen’s eye-opening documentary The Dinosaur looks at the relentless, often disturbing directing techniques behind Mollberg’s art and success.

The Unknown Peter Sellers(en)
Documentary about the life and career of a comic genius, Peter Sellers.

Contágio(pt)
Several Portuguese creators occupy the director's chair in this collective short film shot during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in an unfolding of personal perspectives.

Room 999(fr)
In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”

Boundless(cn)
As Hong Kong's foremost filmmaker, Johnnie To himself becomes the protagonist of this painstaking documentary exploring him and his Boundless world of film. A film student from Beijing and avid Johnnie To fan, Ferris Lin boldly approached To with a proposal to document the master director for his graduation thesis. To agreed immediately and Lin's camera closely followed him for over two years, capturing the man behind the movies and the myths. The result is Boundless, a candid profile of one of Hong Kong's greatest directors and a heartfelt love letter to Hong Kong cinema.

The Yes Men(en)
A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.

Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget(en)
On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.

Pictures of Europe(en)
What makes European cinema so special? Find out in Paul Joyce’s feature-length documentary, Pictures of Europe, which examines the differences between American independent and Hollywood movies and films from European directors. Featuring luminary iconoclasts from European cinema such as Agnes Varda, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodovar, as well as American counterpoints from Paul Schrader, and those who have crossed back and forth, such as Paul Verhoeven

In the Shadow of Hollywood: Race Movies and the Birth of Black Cinema(en)
This documentary captures the sounds and images of a nearly forgotten era in film history when African American filmmakers and studios created “race movies” exclusively for black audiences. The best of these films attempted to counter the demeaning stereotypes of black Americans prevalent in the popular culture of the day. About 500 films were produced, yet only about 100 still exist. Filmmaking pioneers like Oscar Micheaux, the Noble brothers, and Spencer Williams, Jr. left a lasting influence on black filmmakers, and inspired generations of audiences who finally saw their own lives reflected on the silver screen.

Remembering Ragtime(en)
Memories from the making of the classic Milos Forman film "Ragtime".

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika(de)
This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy.

Hellborn(en)
Conrad Brooks discusses "Hellborn," his unfinished movie with Ed Wood, and other projects

John Ford Goes to War(en)
When World War II broke out, John Ford, in his forties, commissioned in the Naval Reserve, was put in charge of the Field Photographic Unit by Bill Donavan, director of the soon-to-be-OSS. During the war, Field Photo made at least 87 documentaries, many with Ford's signature attention to heroism and loss, and many from the point of view of the fighting soldier and sailor. Talking heads discuss Ford's life and personality, the ways that the war gave him fulfillment, and the ways that his war films embodied the same values and conflicts that his Hollywood films did. Among the films profiled are "Battle of Midway," "Torpedo Squadron," "Sexual Hygiene," and "December 7."

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird(pt)
Taking its title from the poem by Wallace Stevens, the film is composed of a series of attempts at looking and being looked at. Beginning as a city state commission under the name and attitude of “Unschool”, the film became a kaleidoscope of the experiences, questions and wonders of a couple of high school students after a year of experiences with filmmaker Ana Vaz questioning what cinema can be. Here, the camera becomes an instrument of inquiry, a pencil, a song.

H*art On(cs)
H*ART ON dives off the deep end of modern art. A film about the yearning to create, to mould everyday emotions into a meaningful life and, most of all, to live beyond one's death. A struggle that gets to the existential core of each of us. How do you find meaning in everyday fear, love, sex and loneliness?

The Making of King Arthur(en)
Short documentary of the making of Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur (2004).

The Short Films of David Lynch(en)
This collection of David Lynch's short films cover the first 29 years of his career. Each film is given a special introduction by the director himself. His earliest underground films Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970) and The Amputee (1974) are showcased as well as two requisitioned works well into his successful career The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988) and his addition for Lumière and Company (1995).

I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale(en)
John Cazale was in only five films – The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter – each was nominated for Best Picture. Yet today most people don't even know his name. I KNEW IT WAS YOU is a fresh tour through movies that defined a generation.

My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn(en)
A documentary directed by Winding Refn's wife, Liv Corfixen, and it follows the Danish-born filmmaker during the making of his 2013 film Only God Forgives.