Riget

This long film was originally made as a four-part TV series and has every chance of becoming the Danish Twin Peaks. It is a whimsical satire with horror elements on soap series set in hospitals, in consciously messy and slovenly video. The modern ghost story is set in a huge Danish national hospital, The Kingdom, that is also its real name; an institution that symbolises pure rational medical science. It is precisely here, where every superstition is taboo, that Von Trier lets the genie out of the lamp. As in a real soap, he follows the characters in their increasingly unlikely adventures. Von Trier was also inspired by a TV series he knew in his youth, the French Belphegor.