Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. They were later joined by fellow Danish directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, forming the Dogme 95 Collective or the Dogme Brethren. Dogme is the Danish word for dogma.

The genre gained international appeal partly because of its accessibility. It sparked an interest in unknown filmmakers by suggesting that one can make a recognised film of a quality to gain recognition, without being dependent on commissions or huge Hollywood budgets. The directors used European government subsidies and television station funding instead.

The friends Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg wrote and co-signed the manifesto and its companion "vows". Vinterberg said that they wrote the pieces in 45 minutes. The manifesto initially mimics the wording of François Truffaut's 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" in Cahiers du cinéma.

Harmony Korine (born January 4, 1973) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author.

He is best known for writing Kids, and for directing Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. His film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at CPH:DOX in November 2009. As of March 2012, Korine's project Spring Breakers was under production in Florida.

Korine was born in Bolinas, California to Eve and Sol Korine and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Sol produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colourful Southern characters" and taught Korine how to use a Bolex camera. As a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films and took him to see Even Dwarfs Started Small in the theater. Korine reminisces, "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so powerful." Korine spent his childhood in Nashville, attending Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. Korine also spent some time living with his parents in a commune, which helped to inspire the commune setting of Mister Lonely. As a teenager, Korine frequented revival theaters, watching classic films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine briefly mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.

Thomas Vinterberg (born 19 May 1969) is a Danish film director who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking, which established rules for simplifying movie production.

In 1993 he graduated from the National Film School of Denmark with Last Round (Sidste Omgang), which won the jury and producers' awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools, and First Prize at Tel Aviv. That year Vinterberg made his first TV drama for DR TV and his short fiction film The Boy Who Walked Backwards, produced by Birgitte Hald at Nimbus Film.

This film has won awards and accolades all over the world, including Nordic Panorama in Iceland, the International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, and the Toronto Film Festival.

His first feature film was The Biggest Heroes (De Største Helte), a road movie that received acclaim in his native Denmark.

In 1995, Vinterberg formed the Dogme 95 movement with Lars von Trier, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen.

Following that dogma in 1998, he conceived, wrote and directed (and also had a small acting role in) the first of the Dogme movies, The Celebration (Festen). As per the rules of the Dogme manifesto, he did not take a directorial credit and IMDb has the film listed with no director. However, he and the film won numerous nominations and awards, including the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.