In Thomas Vinterberg’s Families Like Ours, rising sea levels force the entire country of Denmark to evacuate and become refugees. But the miniseries is more about human resilience than an environmental catastrophe.
The scenario is rather bleak. The Danish government has decided to avoid a major catastrophe and close down the country before rising sea levels will cause it. Thus, all 6 million Danes need to evacuate.
“For me it is not so much about catastrophe as it is about how we cope as human beings and how we reinvent ourselves in this new world,” says Thomas Vinterberg via Zoom from Toronto, where his seven-part series has its North American premiere at TIFF. “In that sense I find it more a series about human beings and less about catastrophe. I even find it hopeful in the sense that I actually do give these characters the ability to reinvent themselves in new surroundings.”
Families Like Ours is a catastrophe series without showing much of the catastrophe itself. There are a few shots of the water rising and the rain pouring down. But the fact that the Danish government wants to evacuate the country before it is too late is a very real possibility in Vinterberg’s mind.
“I felt that I wanted to make something as real as possible and I do not think that the Danish government would hesitate and wait until the water was already there. I think we would be reasonable little Hobbits and we would get our act together and get out of the before the water.”
For the Golden Globe winner, who directed acclaimed movies such as Another Round, The Hunt and The Celebration, it was also an artistic choice.
“Another reason is that showing something sometimes weakens it. So I felt it would be more threatening to know that this water will eventually come but for now it is just part of our dreams and our conversations and it is out there somewhere. To some extent I found that more threatening.”
The series follows people who are all somehow related, when they receive news of their country closing down. They have six months to relocate. Some of the more privileged Danes have the possibility of relocating to France or the U.K., but some of the less privileged head for Bucharest. Usually, the Danes decide which refugees can enter their country. Now the situation is reversed, and we see Danes in dire situations all over in Europe. Was this a comment on some of the stricter Danish immigration laws from the recent past?
“We consider our laboratory a very closed, confined environment, where we do not allow political opinions or any shout-outs,” says Vinterberg about his working environment with Bo Hr. Hansen, with whom he wrote the script. “Having said that, I really hope that together with the other films that I have made that it will move from the cultural sections of the newspapers and make it the debate sections.
“I hope that all these questions will raise a lot of political debates because I think it is healthy and I think it is important. But it is not my job as a movie maker to come out with my political opinion. It is my job to look at human beings and to portray them as precisely as I can.”
However, a few years back, Vinterberg did speak critically of his government’s immigration laws.
“I was shameful,” says Vinterberg. “But this is not part of that debate. This is a very strong effort to talk about human beings and not about politics.”
Vinterberg was living in Paris when he got the idea for the miniseries. A French waiter was rude to him (despite several visits to his café) and he was missing his daughters. It made him reflect about what their worries in life are.
“I guess it comes from a feeling of nervousness,” the 55-year-old director says. “We as mankind used to be nervous about nature: Will we drown in the next storm? Will lightning kill us? Now things have reversed so that we are afraid of what we have done to nature. I was influenced by that.”
This led him to a scenario where the catastrophe is upon us. What would we do? How would we react and maybe more importantly: Who would we help? Who would we consider family? How empathetic would we be?
“The first question that occurred to me sitting there in Paris missing my family was: If I only had two or three seats, who would I fit into my lifeboat? Which is a questions that thousands or even millions of refugees over the years have been confronted with. Some have to leave their children behind. Some have to leave their elderlies behind. That question was so unpleasant for me that I felt like asking everyone else that same question.”
But Vinterberg points out that in spite of it being uncomfortable, this is a very relevant question for us to ask ourselves.
“I have moments when I feel that we are on the first class of the Titanic and we do not want to accept the fact that water is coming into third and fourth class. But we ended up making a series, which I define as a series about human existence. Solidarity and love in times of crisis. I thought it was interesting to see how much we would miss our western values if we lose them.”
Vinterberg went to the Venice Film Festival before heading to TIFF with his miniseries. It seemed the perfect place to have its world premiere as the water in the streets of Venice provides a particularly powerful frame for it.
“I have had an ongoing relationship with this festival for decades and I find the Toronto audience probably the best in the world. The selection committee here has decided to show the series in its entirety which I am super excited about. So I am excited about everything Toronto.”
Vinterberg is working on his second TV series, an adaptation of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart. This book had a special place in his heart.
“It defined my childhood,” says Vinterberg, who lived in a commune and whose father was a journalist. “My dad interviewed her in her kitchen and this was the Bible in my atheist home.”
Lindgren is beloved all over Scandinavia.
“This tale of these two brothers and their loss and the fairy tales that they go through is something that has stuck with all Scandinavians. I even met a director friend the other day who had the two brothers tattooed on his arm. I guess I feel humbled and honored to show this tale to the rest of the world.”
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