Ranking All Of Director Lars von Trier’s Movies
“What are Lars von Trier’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Trier’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Lars von Trier and looked at his Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page. We will update the article if/when a new movie by Lars von Trier is released. Although it probably won’t be immediate so the scores on each site have time to settle and aren’t overly influenced by the early, usually much more opinionated, users.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Lars von Trier
14 ) The Orchid Gardener (Orchidégartneren) (1977)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 15
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
A young, mentally ill man, a visual artist in crisis Victor Marse (Lars von Trier) meets two nurses (Eliza and her girlfriend) during his stay in a sanatorium. These nurses are obvious lesbians. Victor lives with Eliza and her son. He imagines another woman when he is roaming at a coast. He pretends committing a suicide but Eliza does not react to it. Every moment, he stays in front of a blank canvas and thinks. Meanwhile he dresses into Nazi clothes or into women dresses, then he leaves to go to the cinema, and abuses and probably kills a small girl. His masochistic affair with Eliza lasts; he is close to shooting her with a gun but instead she takes out a whip. Victor goes along the streets then he lies naked in front of the canvas on which he has left his bloody fingerprints. After this he drives a funeral car to his work – he is employed in a garden where orchids are grown. Eliza is now the past and in the end, Victor might be dead as someone drives a cross into the ground.
14 ) Images of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder) (1982)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 14
- Letterboxd User Score: 14
Set in Copenhagen during World War II, the film follows a German officer who visits his Danish mistress in the days after the occupation of Denmark has ended.
13 ) Epidemic (1987)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 13
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 15
The second of Trier’s films known collectively as the Europa trilogy. The other two films in the trilogy are The Element of Crime (1984) and Europa (1991). Co-written by Niels Vørsel, the film focuses on the screenwriting process. Vørsel and von Trier play themselves, coming up with a last-minute script for a producer. This story is intercut with scenes from the film they write, in which von Trier plays a renegade doctor trying to cure a modern-day epidemic. In an ironic twist, the doctor discovers that he himself has been spreading the virus.
12 ) Antichrist (2009)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 11
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 12
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
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.
11 ) The Element of Crime (1984)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 9
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
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.
10 ) The Boss of It All (Direktøren for det hele) (2006)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company’s president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.
9 ) The Idiots (1998)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 9
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 9
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.
8 ) Manderlay (2005)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 12
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- Metacritc Critic Score: 10
- Metacritic User Score: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the owners of the farm. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.
7 ) Nymphomaniac (2013)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- Metacritc Critic Score: 5
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.
6 ) Melancholia (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- Metacritc Critic Score: 2
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.
5 ) Europa (1991)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 2
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
An American, Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) goes to post-war Germany in 1945 to work as a railroad conductor for the Zentropa Rail Line instead of going into the Army because he feels its a more valuable thing to do for the state of the world. He meets Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), the daughter of the railroad owner and they fall in love.
4 ) Madea (1988)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
It is an adaptation of the Greek tragedy Medea from Euripides, a version where the Gods willing and intervations are absent. Medea is the tragic character that after helping Jason in the Voyage of the Argonauts (myth says that she has even sacrificed her own brother for Jason’s success), she gets from him only betrayal, as he arranges to marry the King’s of Corinth daughter. The king decides to exile Medea, as she is a danger for his daughter happiness, but Medea asks from him just a day… before she goes outside the borders. That day Medea gets her revenge…
3 ) Dogville (2003)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- Metacritc Critic Score: 7
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
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.
2 ) Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 6
- Metacritic User Score: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
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, escaping life’s troubles – even if just for a moment – by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
1 ) Breaking the Waves (1996)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 3
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
In a small and conservative Scottish village, a woman’s paralytic husband convinces her to have extramarital intercourse so she can tell him about it and give him a reason for living.
Lars von Trier’s Best Movies
Lars von Trier Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | MC Critic | MC User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Breaking the Waves | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| Dancer in the Dark | 10 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Dogville | 9 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Madea | 1 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 4 |
| Europa | 2 | 4 | 11 | 11 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Melancholia | 4 | 11 | 2 | 9 | 7 | 4 | 6 |
| Nymphomaniac | 6 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| Manderlay | 12 | 6 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 8 |
| The Idiots | 8 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 9 |
| “The Boss of It All (Direktøren for det hele)” |
7 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 11 | 12 | 10 |
| The Element of Crime | 5 | 8 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 11 |
| Antichrist | 11 | 13 | 8 | 4 | 12 | 6 | 12 |
| Epidemic | 13 | 12 | 11 | 11 | 13 | 15 | 13 |
| “The Orchid Gardener (Orchidégartneren)” |
14 | 15 | 11 | 11 | 15 | 12 | 14 |
| “Images of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder)” |
14 | 14 | 11 | 11 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
