

The Five Obstructions(2003)
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.

Movie: The Five Obstructions
Top 10 Billed Cast
The Perfect Woman (from Det perfekte menneske) (archive footage)
The Perfect Man (segment "Cuba")
(segment "Cuba")
Maid (segment "Brussels")
Video Trailer The Five Obstructions
Recommendations Movies
6.9Shadows(en)
The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.
6.3The Element of Crime(da)
Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with serial killers; however, as the detective becomes increasingly engrossed in this method, things take a disturbing turn.
7.8The Kingdom(da)
At The Kingdom, Denmark's most technologically advanced hospital, a number of strange and otherworldly events begin occurring, much to the dismay of its doctors and patients. A ghostly ambulance appears and disappears, the voice of a little girl calls to a patient in an elevator shaft, and a doctor's fetus begins growing at an alarming rate.
6.5The Idiots(da)
A group of people gather at a Copenhagen suburban home to break all the limitations and to bring out the 'inner idiot' in themselves.
7.6As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty(en)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
6.5The Perfect Human(da)
An elegant and humorous film—in the guise of a serious anthropological treatise—spotlights "The Perfect Human," a model of the modern Dane created by our wishful thinking.
6.2Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled(en)
Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled pokes fun at both mad scientists and the Egyptian mummy craze that followed the discovery of King Tut's tomb early in the 20th century. A young man wooing the daughter of a scientist hatches a get rich quick scheme when he spots a classified ad searching for "a mummy for experimental purposes." While he wraps up a phony for the scientist, two Egyptian agents (outfitted in a crazy mix of ancient fashion and modern style) tracking stolen relics get tangled in the confusion.
6.8Liliom(en)
A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
6.5EO(en)
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.
8.2Woman in the Dunes(ja)
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
7.4Zelig(en)
Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.
7.6Three Colors: Blue(fr)
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
7.9Dancer in the Dark(en)
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
7.8Dogville(en)
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
6.6Antichrist(en)
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
7.5Almost Famous(en)
In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.
6.5The Neon Demon(en)
When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.
6.3Mama(en)
Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.
Similar Movies
7.211 Colours of the Bird(cs)
A behind-the-scenes look at the eleven-year process it took to make The Painted Bird. The narratives of director Václav Marhoul and actor Petr Kotlár weave their way through the various stages of the film's creation, offering their subjective views from the beginning to the last flap of a year-and-a-half long shoot.
7.5Portrait: Jane Campion and The Portrait of a Lady(en)
A documentary about the making of Jane Campion's 'The Portrait of a Lady'.
6.3Overnight(en)
Alternately hilarious and horrifying, Overnight chronicles one man's misadventures of making a Hollywood movie. It starts out as a rags to riches story as Troy Duffy, a Boston-bred bartender, sells his first screenplay for The Boondock Saints.
4.4Searching for Cannibal Holocaust(en)
Italian horror fan and academic Calum Waddell speaks with some of the original makers of the controversial horror classic "Cannibal Holocaust" before venturing into the Amazon jungle and surrounding city port, Leticia, to uncover some of the local stories behind the making of the motion picture. What is uncovered, however, leads to a wider and unexpected "true crime" story.
8.0Making Wicked(en)
Return to Oz for a fantastic behind-the-scenes journey with this expansive look inside the characters, choreography, and creativity that make up the movie's unforgettable world.
0.0The Costume Designer(en)
This short focuses on the job of the costume designer in the production of motion pictures. The costume designer must design clothing that is correct for the film historically and geographically, and must be appropriate for the mood of the individual scene. We see famed costume designer Edith Head at work on a production. The Costume Designer was part of The Industry Film Project, a twelve-part series produced by the film studios and the Academy. Each series episode was produced to inform the public on a specific facet of the motion picture industry. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
5.9Heckler(en)
HECKLER is a comedic feature documentary exploring the increasingly critical world we live in. After starring in a film that was critically bashed, Jamie Kennedy takes on hecklers and critics and ask some interesting questions of people such as George Lucas, Bill Maher, Mike Ditka, Rob Zombie, Howie Mandel and many more. This fast moving, hilarious documentary pulls no punches as you see an uncensored look at just how nasty and mean the fight is between those in the spotlight and those in the dark.
6.520 years after Caméra Café(fr)
To celebrate the release of a new movie for their 20th anniversary, this documentary offers some behind-the-scenes footages.
7.2Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films(en)
A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.
8.0Aliens, Dragons, Monsters & Me(en)
Documentary about the life and work of Ray Harryhausen.
7.2The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't(en)
On the 35th anniversary of the release of the landmark film "The Godfather," (March 15, 1972) we look back at the time and place of the film's conception and shooting.
0.0A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later(en)
George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and John Williams look back at The Empire Strikes Back 30 years later.
0.0Transitions(en)
A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.
9.0Tasmanian Devil: The Fast and Furious Life of Errol Flynn(en)
The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba
6.9The Yes Men(en)
A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.
0.0To Teach a Bird to Fly(fi)
This experimental nature documentary by Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts depicts climate change and the wave of extinction from the point of view of our near future. Actually, it depicts the age we live in now, or rather its fateful consequences.
7.5Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond(en)
Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.
7.4An Evening with Kevin Smith(en)
Kevin Smith interacts in Q&A sessions throughout various college stops in the USA.
6.7His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th(en)
A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.
0.0From Manila with Love(en)
Retrospective documentary on the making of the 70's women-in-prison exploitation cult favorites "The Big Doll House" and "The Big Bird Cage".







