Danish director Lars Von Trier speaks during a press conference for the controversial film Antichrist, during the film festival in Cannes on Monday. (Francois Mori/Associated Press)

Lars von Trier is living up to his provocateur reputation at the Cannes film festival, showing defiance to reporters who questioned his graphically violent new film Antichrist, which debuted to jeers, gasps and boos from the audience on Sunday.

Much talk at the festival has circled around the Danish filmmaker's latest, Antichrist, which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple seeking refuge in an isolated cabin after the death of their child. However, once there, Gainsbourg descends into a violent, abusive, torture-filled madness.

According to reports, Sunday's screening at Cannes was met with jeers and laughter at some scenes, shocked gasps at others and booing that drowned out some of the applause at the end.

In his production notes, Von Trier — who won the festival's coveted Palme d'Or in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark — called Antichrist "the most important film of my entire career!"

At a subsequent press conference on Monday, an argument broke out between a British journalist, who asked von Trier to explain and justify his film, and other members of the press who chastised the questioner.

"I don't have to justify myself. I make films and I enjoy very much making them. You are all my guests, it's not the other way round," von Trier told reporters.

"I work for myself and I do this little film that I'm now kind of fond of and I haven't done it for you or the audience, so I don't feel I owe anyone an explanation."

The Cannes film festival continues through May 24.