It stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a married couple who experience the accidental death of their infant son, after which they retreat to a cabin in the woods to grieve, where the man experiences strange visions and the woman manifests increasingly violent sexual behavior and sadomasochism.
The narrative is divided into a prologue, four chapters, and an epilogue. Written in while von Trier was hospitalized due to a significant episode of clinical depression , the film was largely influenced by his own struggles with depression and anxiety.
Filming took place primarily in Germany during the late summer of , and was a Danish production co-produced by companies from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden. After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival , where Gainsbourg won Best Actress , Antichrist immediately received polarizing feedback; critics generally praised its artistic execution, but remained strongly divided regarding its substantive merit. The film is dedicated to Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.
Antichrist is the first film in von Trier's unofficially titled Depression Trilogy. It was followed in by Melancholia and then by Nymphomaniac in An unnamed couple have sex in their Seattle apartment while their unsupervised infant son, Nic, climbs up to the bedroom window and falls out of it to his death. The mother collapses at the funeral and spends the next month in the hospital crippled with atypical grief.
The father, a therapist, is skeptical of the psychiatric care she is receiving and takes it upon himself to treat her personally with psychotherapy. She reveals that her second greatest fear is nature, prompting him to try exposure therapy. They hike to their isolated cabin in the woods, called Eden , where she spent time with Nic the previous summer while writing a thesis criticizing gynocide. During the hike, he encounters a deer that shows no fear of him and has a stillborn fawn hanging halfway out of her.
