Total annihilation has always interested me. In Melancholia, the world comes to an end. In J. F. Willumsen’s After the Tempest, the same apocalyptic scene plays out. In its most extreme form, such ideas of annihilation are comparable to Nazism’s concept of the Endlösung, a fact that made me deeply unpopular when I mentioned it at Cannes at the premiere of Melancholia. After that, a judge in Graz had to assess my political affiliation. My wife at the time, Bente, suggested that in my letter to him I should mention that all four of my children had Jewish first or middle names. I thought that was laying it on a bit thick, but I put it in anyway. And, as it turned out, that very point decided the matter. I am of course not a Nazi, but a communist – and, incidentally, a nudist too, thanks to my mother’s first boyfriend.