He started producing small films from childhood, and as a young man made two half-hour long, privately-financed fiction films: "The Orchid Gardener" (1977) and "Menthe la bienheureuse" (1979). During film school, he made the short film "Nocturne" (1981), which won an award at the Filmschoolfest Munich 1981, and "Liberation Pictures" (1982), whose hypnotic modernist imagery is characteristic of Trier's early works. The so-called Europa trilogy, which revolves around the male idealist in a downfall universe, includes the feature film debut "The Element of Crime" (1984), the experimental low-budget "Epidemic" (1987) and the much-maligned melodrama "Europe" (1991). The television production "Medea" (1988) was based on Carl Th.