Kirstine "Paprika" Steen is a Danish actress and director best known for her performances in Dogme 95 films Festen, The Idiots, Mifune, and Open Hearts. Steen was the first Danish actress since Karin Nellemose to win both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year at the Robert Festival, the Danish equivalent of the Oscars.

Dogma 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity". These were rules to create films based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. It was supposedly created as an attempt to "take back power for the directors as artists", as opposed to the studio. 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.