Director
Lars von Trier
Starring
Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Me Me Lai, Jerold Wells, Ahmed El Shenawi
Certificate
15
Run Time
104 mins
Release Year
1984
Country of Origin
Denmark
Language
English, Arabic
Director of Photography: Tom Elling
Editor: Tómas Gislason
Produced by: Per Holst
Music: Bo Holten
Screenplay by: Lars von Trier, Niels Vørsel
Production Designer: Peter Hølmark
Director Bio
Lars von Trier
P&I - Director Bio
Lars von Trier (b. 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He received the Palme d'Or for Dancer in the Dark, the Prix du Jury for Europa, and the Technical Grand Prize for The Element of Crime and Europa at the Cannes Film Festival. His political and humanitarian work was honored in 2004 with the Cinema for Peace awareness award.
The Element of Crime
Part of the Retrospective: The Future Is History Strand
The first instalment of his Europa trilogy, also including Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991), Lars von Trier’s atmospheric feature debut The Element of Crime follows an unconventional detective, played by veteran British actor Michael Elphick, as he hunts a serial killer through a dystopian post-World War III Europe. Shot with sodium lighting creating a sepia-like tone, Von Trier’s dark, dream-like vision of the future is a hybrid of film noir, psychological thriller and science fiction, with influences including Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).