Danish film director Lars von Trier has been admitted to a care facility for Parkinson’s disease, his producer said Wednesday.
“Lars is currently associated with a care centre that can provide him with the treatment and care his condition requires,” Louise Vesth, a producer at von Trier’s production company Zentropa, wrote on Instagram, according to a translation. “Lars is doing well under the circumstances.”
Vesth clarified that she was sharing the news because of speculation in the Danish media, and declined to offer any additional comments.
The “Melancholia” and “Breaking the Waves” director, 68, publicly revealed his diagnosis in 2022.
During an interview with Variety at the time, he opened up on how his condition had affected his work.
“It’s a disease you can’t take away; you can work with the symptoms, though,” he said. “I just have to get used to that I shake and not be shameful in front of people. And then continue because what else should I do?”
Von Trier, known for his disturbing and stylized work, is one of the most acclaimed film directors living today. His musical-tragedy “Dancer in the Dark,” starring Icelandic singer Björk, won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress at the same festival in 2011 for her turn in the psychological sci-fi drama “Melancholia.”
Von Trier is reportedly working on a new film about death and the afterlife, drawing on his own mortality to inspire the story. The film received a grant from the Danish Film Institute last September.
“(The film) has always been designed to be made based on Lars’ physical condition,” producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen said this week. “He has always used limitations for something creative, and now it is his own physical limitation that he incorporates into the creative.”
The film, titled “After,” will be his first since 2018’s “The House That Jack Built,” starring Matt Dillon.
___
© 2025 New York Daily News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
