The Idiots

Selected by Sophie Calle

Among the first feature films to be entirely shot on digital cameras, Lars von Trier’s The Idiots (Idioterne) was the second film to become an official Dogme 95 film. With von Trier’s trademark mix of sensation and sensitivity, The Idiots follows a Danish group of anti-bourgeois adults who strive to connect with their “inner idiot” and thus release their inhibitions. When Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) witnesses a group of the “idiots” acting out in a restaurant, she is taken in by the excitement of acting against the norm, and decides to join their commune and attempt to release herself from the pressures of her middle-class existence. 

Filmed through an expansive improvisation process, and with the cast and crew living in a commune during filming, The Idiots creates a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the limitations of midcentury European counterculture movements and their legacy on today’s society.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival