Lars Von Trier 

Denmark
 

Filmed according to the DOGMA 95 doctrine – as was Thomas Vinterberg's Festen (The Celebration), the other Danish contender at Cannes – Idioterne has a soundtrack of real-time recordings. On location, as von Trier would say "Action!", both actors and musicians would play.

"The DOGMA 95 rule that sound and picture must not be produced separately turned out to be very interesting, but it was in this way the very first sound movies were made. As I interpret it, you are allowed to do nothing with the sound and picture after the shooting. Neither must be changed or moved," von Trier explained.

"As a consequence, we often edited according to the sound instead of the picture, because if you require a particular sound or cue, you have to use the picture that accompanies it. The 
outcome has been weirder pictures and peculiar differences in the intended combination of the sound and the picture elements of the film."

Apparently a protege of festival director Gilles Jacob, von Trier has had all his feature films selected for the official programme at Cannes – from his debut, Forbrydelsens element (The Element of Crime) in 1984, through Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) to Breaking the Waves, which won the Grand Prix in 1996.

Idioterne was restricted by the DOGMA 95 manifesto, calling for a new chastity to "put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition". Also written and photographed by von Trier, the film follows a group of young people who share one interest: idiocy. With a large house in suburban Copenhagen as their base, they spend all their time together exploring the hidden and less-appreciated values of obstinate folly.

"In film, it is always the village idiot who knows, and the man who 'knows' who does not know. But what if the idiot is not a real idiot, just an 'idiotic' idiot? Does that make him the man who knows less, or the idiot who knows more; or the idiot who knows less or the man who knows more? Probably none of the above, but it is fun to pretend otherwise," clarified von Trier.

In the film, Karen, a newcomer to the group, is initially angry at their antics, but eventually begins to join in, taking part in the card games and even the group sex romps. A total of 11 different types of idiot are represented in the group: weepy, irascible, carer, slow, baby, wheelchair, refugee, dopey, frilly, scaredy and mischief. Every day they practice idiocy, as "a manifestation of an explosive appetite for life in which they confront it with society".
Idiocy is like hypnosis and ejaculation: if you want it, you cannot have it – and if you do not want it, you can. Maybe it works out for her, and that might be the moral of the film. My films have become highly moral recently," he concluded.

Von Trier finished the script in four days – between 16-19 May, 1997 – and he shot most of it with a $4,000 camera. He has declared that Idioterne is "a film by idiots, about idiots, for idiots." Jorn Rossing Jensen