Lars von Trier, the acclaimed and controversial Danish director of Dancer in the Dark, Dogville and Melancholia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 66.
Von Trier’s production company, Zentropa, confirmed reports on Monday that the director had been diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disorder, but said he was “in good spirits and is being treated for his symptoms”.
In a press release, Zentropa said von Trier would complete post-production on The Kingdom Exodus, the third and final season of its horror melodrama TV series, which will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 31 August Art house streaming platform MUBI has picked up The Kingdom Exodus for North America.
Zentropa, however, said von Trier will only do limited press work for the project. Von Trier has already been shy with the press since a notorious press conference for Melancholia in Cannes in 2011, when the director joked that he “sympathized” with Adolf Hitler, a joke that got von Trier kicked out of Cannes for seven years and which led to a police investigation for alleged “trivialization of the Holocaust”, a crime in France. The investigation was dropped without von Trier being charged.
The director shot the first two seasons of The Kingdom in 1994 and 1997. The series is a combination of hospital melodrama and grotesque horror, following the staff and patients of an avant-garde but haunted hospital in Copenhagen. The Kingdom Exodus, the series’ third season, features an all-star Scandinavian cast including Mikael Persbrandt, Lars Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Tuva Novotny, with Alexander Skarsgård and David Dencik guest starring.