In the fictitious rural American town of Dogville, a mysterious woman (Kidman) arrives seeking shelter from her troubled past. She agrees to work for the townspeople in exchange for protection from a band of gangsters pursuing her. As the threat becomes imminent, the townspeople modify their arrangement with potentially fatal consequences. Never a stranger to Brechtian formal experimentation, von Trier employed a uniquely designed black-box set for the town with virtually no facades or building structures and further heightened the work’s theatricality by relying upon a unseen male narrator.

A companion piece to Dogville, Sami Saif’s behind-the-scenes account combines cast interviews with footage compiled from “boxes of truth”—confessional boxes equipped with video cameras located on the set. The confessional footage gives insight into the actors’ struggles with von Trier’s tortured process.