Cannes - Danish film director Lars von Trier has whipped up a storm at the Cannes Film Festival with his new movie about a depressed woman's descent into madness.

The world's leading film festival has been free of controversies in the last two years, but the 53-year-old director's movie, Antichrist, which includes a talking fox, violence, genital mutilation and a fair share of blood provoked uproar at the late Sunday night press screening.

Always ready to make their feelings known, the Cannes film press corps greeted the end of the film with booing and laughter, which tended to drown out the muted applause from some of those attending the screening.

Matters were made worse when the credits included a note saying that von Trier had dedicated his film to the iconic Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

This sparked another outburst of derisive laughter and catcalls from the audience.

The film stars US actor Willem Dafoe and London-born Charlotte Gainsbourg as an unnamed couple battling to overcome the tragic death of their young son.

In notes accompanying the film, von Trier said he saw Antichrist as therapy for the depression he suffered from about two years ago.

The movie comes almost a decade after von Trier won Cannes prestigious Palme D'Or prize for Dancer in the Dark.

This years' Cannes festival includes a large number of films in the festival's main competition where horror and violence are graphically portrayed.

Apart from a movie about a bloodthirsty band tracking down Nazis in wartime France, there has also been a film about a priest-turned vampire and two movies about the brutality of Asia's gangland culture.

Antichrist opens with slow-motion black-and-white sequence showing the passion between the couple and the circumstances surrounding the death of their son.

The couple move to their small cottage, called Eden. The hope is that, in the forest under the guidance of her husband, a therapist, the wife can confront the fears that her son's death has unleashed and her sense of guilt for the tragedy.

But Eden turns out to be more of a journey into hell as the woman slides into a violent insanity.

Even before they depart for the forest the woman had lashed out at her husband, claiming he had always been distant to her and their son.

However in the isolated cottage she finally vents her fury on him as her madness deepens in scenes that are almost worthy of any horror movie. The graphic violence at times seemed to shock the audience.

At least the husband cannot claim he was not warned. At one point in the film, he stumbles across a fox who tells him: "Chaos reigns," a scene that triggered derisive laughter in the press screening. (dpa)