Europa
“You will now listen to my voice … On the count of ten you will be in Europa …” So begins Max von Sydow’s opening narration to Lars von Trier’s hypnotic Europa (known in the U.S. as Zentropa), a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 post-war Frankfurt. With its gorgeous black-and-white and colour imagery and meticulously recreated (if then nightmarishly deconstructed) costumes and sets, Europa is one of the great Danish filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful works, a runaway-train ride to an oddly futuristic past.
Director
Cast
Year
1991
Duration
1h 52m
Countries
Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland
Languages
English, German
Studio
StudioCanal