Lars Von Trier Returning To Cannes With 'The Nymphomaniac'?

Controversial filmmaker planning a sensational return to the Cannes Film Festival despite being banned from the Croisette and dubbed persona non grata last year.

By Matt Holmes /

Controversial filmmaker Lars Von Trier is planning a sensational return to the Cannes Film Festival despite being banned from the Croisette and dubbed persona non grata last year. The Danish born filmmaker will shoot perhaps his most controversial movie yet with 'The Nymphomaniac' in Germany this summer, with a view to premiering the film at the festival in 2013. The ambitious movie will chronicle the erotic sex life of a woman until the age of 50 and Von Trier is hoping to shoot two versions, a hardcore pornographic cut (which would play at festivals and a director's version home video release) and a softcore version (for worldwide distribution) where different camera angles would be used and likely a blurring of body parts. Von Trier's new muse, French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg will star in the leading role and is no stranger to controversial nudity and sex scenes for Von Trier after starring in Anti-Christ, a sexually explicit psychological drama that left little visually to the imagination and which debuted to stunned audiences at Cannes 2009. She also appeared, fully clothed, in Von Trier's apocalyptic drama Melancholia at last year's Cannes, before the shit hit the fan with Von Trier's ill conceived comments and provocative statements of empathy with the long deceased Nazi leader Adolf Hitler that saw him banned from the festival. Now producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen confirms to Screen Daily that a Cannes 2013 opening for 'The Nymphomaniac', if festival chief Thierry Fremaux is the forgiving kind, could be on the cards;
€œWe are making two films. It is a big operation. I personally hope that we should be ready for Cannes next year. We will shoot both and edit both €“ and we want to finish both at the same time.€ €œWe will probably blur the central points of the human body for the release worldwide but we will probably make one unblurred that will be for screening maybe in Cannes.€ €œ...we have some pretty big names in the movie which proves that in spite of his (von Trier€™s) strange quotes from Cannes last year, his value for actors to work with him has never been better,€
So would Cannes welcome back Von Trier? Well if Fremaux believes the film will be a success for his festival then we imagine a deal would most certainly be made. However we could imagine a situation where Von Trier himself was banned from appearing in person but the film allowed to screen (his production company Zentropa have Thomas Vinterberg's "The Hunt" playing in-competition this year... so the ban doesn't extend to the studio) but we imagine by next year things will have calmed down and the world will be back to how it was. Previously; Lars Von Trier Banned From Cannes Film Festival!Lars Von Trier To Make THE NYMPHOMANIAC NextMELANCHOLIA Review: Peculiar, Lengthy but MeditativeCannes 2011 Review: MELANCHOLIA Is An Infinitely Morbid DelightMike says ANTI-CHRIST is shocking, disgusting, frightening and will leave you feeling uncomfortable. But that€™s kind of the point!Provocative But With Little To Redeem It: A New Voice on ANTICHRIST