10 Filmmakers Obsessed With ONE Thing

The films of Lars von Trier are often labelled as sexist or misogynistic, and whether you agree with that assessment or not, it's easy to see why, given the uncommon number of his movies which feature women being forced to suffer for extended periods without much in the way of catharsis.

From Breaking the Waves' climactic gang-rape, to Dancer in the Dark's devastating final execution, Dogville's brutal endurance trial of physical abuse, and that moment involving a pair of rusty scissors in Antichrist, von Trier's proclivity for making his female leads squirm has been thoroughly dissected by critics.

Needless to say his most recent film, The House That Jack Built, only doused more gasoline on the fire, as it features - among other things - a sequence where a woman's breasts are cut off, one of which is then pinned to a policeman's car while the other is turned into a wallet. Yup.

Whatever you make of von Trier's work, there's no denying his seemingly pathological fascination with seeming women dealt major physical and emotional damage.