A couple undergoes extreme changes and the woman suffers from intense anxiety attacks. In order to help her and to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, they retreat to ‘Eden', their isolated cabin in the woods. But the stay turns out to be stranger and more horrifying than they ever expected as nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse. Their relationship is put to test and they are forced to confront themselves and their fears. 

Nordic jury motivation: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is a wild, visually beautiful and shockingly violent film about sorrow, rage and guilt. Perfectly phrased in its imagery and acting, Antichrist places the cinematically, psychologically and physically familiar in a challenging and unfamiliar context. It is a passionate exploration of the irrational forces of emotion and nature. In his unmistakably, deeply personal way, Lars von Trier is pushing the viewers towards the edge of their own deepest fears.

The Nordic Jury: Anne Jerslev (Denmark), Johanna Grönqvist (Finland), Sjon (Iceland), Le LD Nguyen (Norway), Eva af Geijerstam (Sweden).

National jury motivation: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is uncomfortable and moving at one and the same time. It is a wild, beautiful and shockingly violent film about sorrow, rage and guilt, about the chaos that infects the two main characters’ lives following the death of their young son. Inner and outer realities fuse in Antichrist’s terrifying and aesthetically sublime vision of the hold that overwhelming pain and anger have over human beings. In much the same way as Von Trier, by looking afresh at the entrails of the horror-movie genre, digs deep and disturbingly into the inner workings of his protagonists, the film digs deep into those of the viewer.