I get Hitler: Danish director Lars von Trier shocks Cannes

LARS von Trier's expression of "a little bit" of sympathy for Adolf Hitler has resulted in him being declared persona non grata by the Cannes festival.

CONTROVERSY has gripped Cannes, with Lars von Trier expressing "a little bit" of sympathy for Adolf Hitler, which resulted in the Danish director being declared persona non grata by the festival last night.

Adding to the drama, Peter Fonda called US President Barack Obama a traitor in four-letter fashion.

The rhetorical double feature overshadowed what many expected would top the bill for uproar at the festival - French director Xaviar Durringer's telling of President Nicolas Sarkozy's rise to power, The Conquest.

At a press conference yesterday for his new film, Melancholia, which is up for a Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, Von Trier - a notorious provocateur who later apologised for his remarks - was asked about his German roots.

"I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out I was really a Nazi, you know, because my family was German, Hartmann, which also gave me some pleasure," the director said with a smile. "I understand Hitler," he added. "I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely, but I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end."

His star Kirsten Dunst, who is also of German descent, looked uncomfortable and murmured: "Oh my God, this is terrible," to co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg. But the auteur assured her: "I'm just saying I think I understand the man," he said.

"He's not what you would call a good guy, but, yeah, I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit, yes.

"But come on, I'm not for the Second World War. And I'm not against Jews, (but) not too much because Israel is a pain in the ass.

"OK, I'm a Nazi," he said.

In a late-day statement, von Trier said: "If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologise. I am not anti-Semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi."

After an extraordinary meeting, the festival's board of directors last night issued a statement saying the festival, "very firmly condemns these statements and declares Lars von Trier persona non grata at the Cannes festival, with immediate effect".

In the festival's American Pavilion, Golden Globe winner Fonda - best known for the 1969 road movie Easy Rider - used an obscenity to attack Mr Obama's handling of the BP gulf oil spill.

"I sent an email to President Obama saying, 'You are a f . . king traitor,' using those words," said Fonda, a co-producer of The Big Fix, a documentary on last year's oil rig explosion.

"You're a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military - in this case the Coast Guard - what they can and could not do."

By "foreign boots", Fonda meant BP.

AFP