In a world of shadows, she found the light of life.
DramaCrime
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
Release Date
September 1, 2000
Runtime
2h 20m
Rating
7.8/10 (1994 votes)
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Joel Grey, Cara Seymour, Vladica Kostic, Jean-Marc Barr
Dazzling Björk in this indictment against the death sentence, in tight close-ups. This film is a UFO, musical without being.
December 31, 2020
badelf - 6/10
I have tremendous respect for Lars von Trier's work, and I deeply admire his courage in attempting to fuse drama with musical theater. "Dancer in the Dark" is nothing if not audacious. Unfortunately, ambition alone doesn't make a successful film, and this one fails both as a drama and as a musical.
As drama, the film stumbles on two fundamental levels. First, the handheld, shaky camera movement...
October 31, 2025
CinemaSerf - 7/10
You get a clue as to the slightly surreal nature of the drama right from a start that sees Björk and Catherine Deneuve doing their own amateur dramatics rehearsals of “The Sound of Music”! It turns out that the former, “Selma”, is a Czech immigrant to the USA who is suffering from a progressive blindness that she has passed on to her young son. She knows that he still has time to have corrective s...
December 4, 2025
Dancer in the Dark
In a world of shadows, she found the light of life.
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
In a world of shadows, she found the light of life.
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Dancer in the Dark about?▾
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive …
