Most directors at Cannes you can meet at their hotels lining the boardwalk for a Perrier and an interview. Not Lars von Trier (born 1956), the director of such disturbing films as Europa (1991), Dancer in the Dark (2000), and Dogville (2003). For the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, von Trier had sequestered himself in Antibes, far from the maddening crowds, at the exclusive Hotel Cap perched atop a nature reserve. As my taxi rounded the cliffs, the sky turned gray and mist floated on the waves, rather like the empty landscape of von Trier's own movie, Breaking the Waves (1996). A lone tornado ripped across the water. The taxi dropped me into total silence–except for the twittering of birds–and on the mowed slopes to von Trier's private cabana, there on a path rounding the sea, I came upon the director himself, walking calmly alone in his white suit and white beard, looking like the gentle proprietor of a great plantation. After all, his newest film at the time, Manderlay, a scathing critique of racism in the United States, takes place on one.

Von Trier is a lot more gentle than one might expect from a man with the reputation for terrorizing his actresses. A small man, with a twinkle in his eye, he is quick to tilt his head and mumble a response, no matter what you ask–and what usually comes out of his mouth seems to surprise both him and the journalist.