Raised by communist nudists who imposed no rules on their impressionable son, the Danish director Lars von Trier is now obsessed with control in his life and his work.

A director of international standing, von Trier is so phobic about travelling that all his films, even those set in America, have been filmed in Denmark, Sweden or, in one instance, Scotland. His latest film, The Boss of It All, is released next week. For those who need to brush up on your Lars, here's a bluffers' guide to the 51-year-old enfant terrible of arthouse.

Family

In 1995, von Trier's mother confessed on her deathbed that the man he had thought was his father wasn't. She explained that his real father was a descendant of the Danish composer J.P.E. Hartmann and that she had chosen him to secure a creative genetic make-up for her child. “If I'd known that my mother had this plan, I would have become something else,” he said in 2003. “I would have shown her, the slut!” But elsewhere he confessed that he found the whole episode “very sad”.

"Von”

He was born Lars Trier. The “von” was added as a joke by his fellow students at film school, an aristocratic prefix that contrasted with his rather more common real name, Lars Trier being the Danish equivalent of John Smith. Von Trier kept the “von” as a homage to the film-makers Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg.

Religion

Although his father who turned out to be his stepfather was Jewish, von Trier says that he was raised in a household where religion was banned. As a consequence, the reliably contrary von Trier says he has always been fascinated by religion - and, of course, this fascination manifests itself in somewhat offbeat ways. He converted to Catholicism in 1995 but in interviews to promote Dogville in 2003 he confessed: “I don't know if I'm all that Catholic really. I'm probably not. Denmark is a very Protestant country. Perhaps I only turned Catholic to piss off a few of my countrymen.”

He raided religious terminology for his Dogma 95 movement. Directors were encouraged to take a “vow of chastity” that limited their freedom and stripped their film-making down to its bare essentials. Von Trier compounded the idea of monastic self-denial by referring to Dogma directors as “brothers”.

Von Trier's relationship with his adopted faith remains complicated. His latest script, called Antichrist, postulates that the Earth was created by Satan rather than God. It is described by an industry insider who has read it as “bonkers”.

Depression

A lifelong predisposition to depression and anxiety reached a climax last year, with von Trier so incapacitated by his mental issues that he announced that he would no longer be making films. His collaborator and friend Stellan Skarsgård said: “I think he has probably tried every possible treatment there is except electric shocks.”

Last month, though, Skarsgård confirmed that von Trier has started working on several new projects which he gleefully informed Skarsgård he was too old for.

Actors: torture of

Von Trier is notoriously hard on his actors. When Paul Bettany was offered a role in Dogville he hesitated about accepting it. Skarsgård urged him to accept, saying that von Trier's shoots were so funny that he would miss something extraordinary if he turned it down. Halfway through the shoot, Bettany asked Skarsgård when the fun would start. Skarsgård replied: “I lied. I did it because he is amazing to work with.”

The most notorious personality clash occurred between von Trier and Björk, the star of his capital punishment musical, Dancer in the Dark. According to von Trier, every morning before shooting she would announce: “Mr von Trier, I despise you” and spit at him.

Experimentation

Cynics might dismiss von Trier's approach to storytelling as gimmicky - Dogville and Manderlay (2005) were shot on a huge soundstage with virtually no props and the outline of buildings sketched on the floor; The Boss of It All was filmed using a camera device called Automavision which von Trier

“developed with the intention of limiting human influence”.

He would position the camera for each shot, but then a computer would randomly choose when to tilt, pan or zoom. This results in curious framing and disconcerting jump cuts within scenes, but doesn't distract from the story nearly as much as you might expect. This is perhaps because, in common with the Dogma 95 initiative, most of von Trier's innovations serve the same purpose - to restrict the more manipulative tools in a film-maker's arsenal and strip movie making down to its essentials: script and acting. One of the main reasons that von Trier adopted Automavision was to keep the actors on their toes. Not knowing where the camera would be pointing meant that they wouldn't be able to rely on their usual tricks, such as presenting their best side to the camera or stealing scenes.

The Boss of It All is released on Feb 29

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