He should know. Von Trier holds the distinction of being the only director ever to be ejected from the Cannes Film Festival after he responded to a question about his ancestry by getting himself into a verbal tangle that began with “For a long time I was a Jew” and ended with “OK, I’m a Nazi.” It’s clear to anyone watching video of the event that von Trier was making what he thought of as a joke, an oblique reference to his mother’s deathbed confession that Lars was conceived not with the Jewish man he’d known as his father but during her affair with a German man he’d never met. But it’s just as clear, as reflected in the growing horror in the faces around him, that few people would see the humor.

When Canadian filmmaker Eva Ziemsen traveled to Denmark to make A Conversation with Lars von Trier (“I called . . . to request an interview, and they politely told me no. . . . I considered this an invitation”), his Cannes kerfuffle was still in the future. But brief as it is, the conversation between Ms. Ziemsen and Mr. von Trier covers a surprising amount of ground, and offers some fascinating insights into the worldview—personal as well as professional—of the man whom some people, himself included, consider the best film director in the world.

Watch A Conversation with Lars von Trier

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