Five Obstructions Humiliate Perfect Human

Just when you thought he couldn't get any more cruel, the maverick director Lars Von Trier has shocked the Venice film festival by subjecting one of the greats of Danish cinema to a series of cringe-inducing humiliations.

His documentary, Five Obstructions, in which he challenges Jorgen Leth to remake his cult film The Perfect Human under his "satanic" guidance, might well have been called I'm A Director, Get Me Out of Here.

For by turning the conventions of reality TV on its head, Von Trier forces Leth - an institution in Scandinavia and his country's royal counsel in Haiti - to submit his five versions to him for approval.

In an attempt to break the older man down, Von Trier sends 66-year-old Leth to Cuba to make the first film under impossible conditions, and when he succeeds he is dispatched to Bombay's red light district, Leth's idea of hell on earth.

With Leth's famous sang-froid still intact, Von Trier tells him he "hasn't suffered enough" so he must make a "crap cartoon".

When Leth protests and claims he cannot make a "stupid film", Von Trier warns him that he won't be satisfied until he cracks.

Von Trier, who pushed his actors to the edge in films such as Dancer In The Dark and Breaking the Waves, has a revealing tip on how to deal with stars. Treat them like "you are chopping cabbage in a mincer", said the man who has just lost Nicole Kidman from the next two parts of his U, S and A trilogy, "and you get the best performances". When Leth succeeds again, Von Trier directs the fifth film, forcing Leth to read a voiceover and confess to his shortcomings.

Von Trier claims he humbled his hero to let Leth's inner "Munch's Scream out", but admitted it was him who looked ridiculous in the end. "It is always the attacker who is exposed," he said.