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Poster for Manderlay
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Released
2005 · FILM

Manderlay

A determined young woman infiltrates an isolated 1930s Southern plantation to dismantle its self‑imposed slavery, confronting entrenched authority and the unsettling limits of her own idealism as she fights to liberate its inhabitants.

“Liberation. Whether they want it or not.”

Directed by
Lars Von Trier
Written by
Lars Von Trier
Runtime
139 min
Language
DA
Drama
Streaming on
  • MUBI

Synopsis

In 1933, a young woman and her father come upon an Alabama plantation where the inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Driven by a sense of duty toward those behind the gates, she decides to stay and help liberate them, guiding them through their first harvest. Joining her are four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, as they take on the challenging task of reviving the plantation known as Manderlay.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Molly Malene StensgaardShot by Anthony Dod MantleScored by Joachim Holbek

Box Office

2005 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.0× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$675K

Budget$14.2M
Worldwide gross$675K
break-even (2.5×)

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