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It was a difficult shoot, even for a Lars von Trier movie. The Danish writer-director, 53, has a reputation for making films that are both challenging for audiences (1996's Breaking the Waves ; 1998's The Idiots ) and tough on actresses – Bjork and Nicole Kidman both complained about him after starring in, respectively, Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Dogville (2003). But while shooting his latest, Antichrist , which opens in Canada next week –Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a couple shattered by grief after their young son dies in an accident – von Trier himself was the one who was suffering.

‘I don’t think there is hope for mankind,’ von Trier said at the Toronto International Film Festival. ‘I see man and his civilizations being wiped out in three generations.’

Crippled by depression and anxiety, he couldn't hold the camera steady, and on several days the filming was held up or halted altogether because he needed a nap or couldn't go on. He wrote the script during a severe period in which he couldn't get out of bed and incorporated into it his own dreams, fears, anxieties and experiences with cognitive behaviour therapy. And because he's afraid to fly, he couldn't even admit all that in person during September's Toronto International Film Festival – he held his press conference via Skype.

The image from Copenhagen was heartbreaking: A mild-looking man with short brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, von Trier sighed often and appeared to have trouble taking full breaths; his voice shook and he swallowed a lot. He apologized frequently: for not remembering details about the shoot; for the “predictable” way Antichrist 's characters descend into madness in the second half of the film; and for “wasting your time. My problem with this film is that I have very little to say about it,” he said. He confessed he'd been “thrown out” of his group therapy that day, because he couldn't come up with one positive thing that had happened in the past week. “I've been drinking a lot every day and not doing any yoga at all,” he said.

Glimmers of von Trier's playful humour shone through. “The actors didn't argue with me this time, but that was because I was so clever to tell them I was depressed,” he said. Told that Antichrist 's reception at TIFF was generally positive, von Trier replied, “If North Americans are happy about it, I'm not happy. I made a mistake.” And during a digression about how Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's work gives him hope – “not from their stories, but from the fact that he can communicate beauty to me; I'm not so crazy about hope in stories” – von Trier said, “I know that Tarkovsky saw my first film just before he died and hated it. Though I wouldn't conclude that he died from it.”

But mainly von Trier was startlingly candid. “I don't think there is hope for mankind,” he said. “I see man and his civilizations being wiped out in three generations.” Asked about his greatest fear, he replied, “It probably has to do with not being here, but then again, not being here sounds very nice.”

Throughout all this, star Willem Dafoe sat onstage, microphone in hand, gently cajoling von Trier along. The two had worked together on Manderlay (2005), the sequel to Dogville , and later that day, in a separate interview, Dafoe admitted the director was markedly more depressed during their second collaboration. “You saw Lars today. You can imagine that, and even more so,” Dafoe said. He was wearing jeans and a grey button-down shirt; his hair was shaggy and he spoke slowly, in his trademark gravel-and-honey voice. “Lars was very shaky. It was an incredible challenge. So I'm proud Charlotte and I were able to support him by throwing ourselves into it. That does have its rewards, because when you give yourself to Lars, he gives himself back. I'm aware that we took a leap, but I think we made a disturbing, beautiful film.”

Dafoe, 54, has made a career out of taking leaps, some more successful than others. He played Jesus for Martin Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988); let Madonna tie him up in Body of Evidence (1993); terrorized Sandra Bullock in Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); went hilariously German in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004); and had his clock cleaned by Tobey Maguire in three Spider-Man flicks (2002, 2004 and 2007). This year alone, he starred in two vampire movies, worked with Werner Herzog, and played a rat (in Fantastic Mr. Fox , the upcoming animated film from Wes Anderson, his Life Aquatic director). No wonder critics often call Dafoe “brave.”

“When I read that I think, ‘Oh, that's good.' I like people to think I'm brave,” he said, grinning. “To be kind of ungraceful, I see plenty of people who aren't brave in moviemaking – some of whom get credit for being brave when they're not. Because the things you think might be hard aren't necessarily the things that are hard.”

Dafoe's greatest thrill, he said, is “trying to disappear. When you put yourself in situations where you're engaged in such a full way, that something else takes over. On some fundamental level, it's when you find a gesture. When you are the gesture. That's when acting has grace, and a kind of power. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with you. It's not about channelling, it's about making yourself available to receive what's happening anyway. You just try to invite the situation, make yourself fertile for it. You hook up with people who invite you to be engaged in that way.”

The two greatest enemies of that engagement, Dafoe continued, are habit – “where you stop thinking, you're like a dog, you lose that wonder or curiosity or fear” – and working just for a paycheque. “I'm not a holy man,” he said. “There are always practical considerations. But deep down, we're not really interested in money, but what we think the money gets us. So I'd rather go around the money and get those things directly. Live an interesting life, where I feel fulfilled.”

Dafoe, who lives in New York, finds fulfilment in taking long, aimless walks, “because things get revealed to you in such uncontrollable, human dimension”; in shopping for food to cook (he makes a mean spaghetti with fish eggs); and in work that causes “a shift in how I look at things,” he said. “That's why I love working with people like Lars, on stories that are dark, that go to depressing places, that contain violence and frustration and the idea that we're all going to die. I'm more filled with excitement and wonder by dark stories than by movies that are designed to make me feel good. I can make myself feel good.”

No wonder Dafoe and von Trier work so well together. In suffering – for art, and in life – they see the sublime.