“I Am Doing Good”: Lars Von Trier Addresses Parkinson’s Diagnosis, Talks ‘The Kingdom Exodus’ – Venice

deadline.com:

Lars von Trier stoically put in an appearance at the Venice Film Festival via video link on Thursday for the premiere of his upcoming series The Kingdom Exodus, making his first international appearance since announcing in August that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.The Oscar-nominated, Cannes Palme d’Or winning Danish director said he was feeling better following his diagnosis.“I am doing good, but the shaking will take some time to fight.

I’m feeling better but a little bit more stupid than I used to be so that says a lot,” he said to applause from the press corps.The Kingdom Exodus, the third and final instalment of von Trier’s rebooted 1990s cult supernatural TV show The Kingdom is already creating strong buzz ahead of its Out of Competition screening on Thursday.The trilogy initially began in the 1990s and is set in a hospital built on top of the old bleaching ponds in Copenhagen, where evil has taken root.Von Trier said the conditions under which he had made the latest instalment had been very different from the first season.“The first episodes were made with very little time and very little money and this time I worked on it for three and a half years.”The show is being represented physically in Venice by producer Louise Vesth and cast members Bodil Jørgensen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Nicolas Bro and Ida Engvoli who attended the press conference in person.Jørgensen, who plays a sleepwalking woman called Karen at the heart of the new season, explained that she regarded her new role as a continuation of her first collaboration with von Trier in the 1998 feature The Idiots, in which she also played a woman called Karen.“In my world, I’m the same woman, 30 years older.