A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.
Set in 1933, the plot picks up where Dogville (previous film by Lars von Trier) ended, with Grace and her father (Willem Dafoe replacing James Caan) heading south. Reaching Alabama, they discover slavery still thrives at the Manderlay cotton plantation. Appalled, Grace decides to stay on, free the black residents and teach them about democracy. But replacing the old system isn't so simple, and Grace's good intentions eventually reap hellish consequences.
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Jeremy Davies, Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny
Directed by Lars von Trier
English language with latvian and russian subtitles.
In 1931, at the height of his artistic powers, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein travels to Mexico to shoot a new film to be titled Que Viva Mexico. Freshly rejected by Hollywood and under increasing pressure to return to Stalinist Russia, Eisenstein arrives at the city of Guanajuato. Chaperoned by his guide Palomino Cañedo, he vulnerably experiences the ties between Eros and Thanatos, sex and death, happy to create their effects in cinema, troubled to suffer them in life.
Peter Greenaway's film explores the mind of a creative genius facing the desires and fears of love, sex and death through ten passionate days that helped shape the rest of the career of one of the greatest masters of Cinema.