Thomas Vinterberg

In danger of becoming as well known for his good looks as for his movies, Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg entered into the spirit of child's play with fellow director Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves" 1996), taking a "Vow of Chastity" as part of their "Dogma 95" and finding liberation in the self-imposed limits. Though the tireless self-promoter won both praise and scorn for his half-serious, half tongue-in-cheek embrace of Dogma 95, with some parties sneering he wasn't exactly "reinventing the wheel" by walking in the footprints of Cassavetes, De Sica and Altman, he certainly backed all the talk with a brilliant film adhering to the manifesto's edicts, "Festen/The Celebration" (1998), an expertly paced melodrama employing child abuse as a catalyst to explore unbridled machismo, patriarchal arrogance and the prevalence of Danish racism. His feature debut, "De Storste helte/The Greatest Heroes" (1996), had been a fairly typical example of the "road movie" genre and paled in comparison.