Epidemic 1987

In a metafictional retelling of the film that unfolds over five days, the opening day follows screenwriters Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel as they discover they have lost the only copy of a script they are writing — a film-within-a-film titled Kommisæren Og Luderen, a sly nod to The Element of Crime. They decide to pivot and write a new script about an epidemic: the outbreak of a plague-like disease. A central figure is a doctor, Mesmer, who, defying the local Faculty of Medicine, travels to the countryside to aid those in need. As the days pass, the events described in their script begin to merge with actual, unfolding incidents of a similar illness in the real world.

Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel travel to Germany, where they encounter Udo Kier who recounts the Allied bombing of Cologne during World War II, a memory that blurs the line between fiction and history.

After this journey, Niels goes to a hospital for a minor surgical procedure. In that same setting, he urges Lars to visit Palle, a pathologist performing an autopsy on a man who recently died from an unknown disease. The narrative then moves toward its final day: the two writers host a dinner with their producer, and they reveal the conclusion of their film — that Mesmer and his medical kit have spread the disease. The producer, however, dismisses the short twelve-page script as lacking violence, heavy deaths, and substantial subplots, a critique that mirrors a common wish in Danish cinema.

As if to assist, a hypnotist and a woman arrive at the house to “help” finalize the writing, but the woman is consumed by visions from the script — visions that begin to mirror real life. She cries out in terror, and soon everyone realizes she has contracted the very disease spreading around them. The tension escalates as she dies by suicide with a fork, another resident of the house succumbs, and Niels himself begins to show symptoms of the illness.