02/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: In his heartfelt debut miniseries, Thomas Vinterberg sends six million Danes off towards homelessness and statelessness

Like his celebrated compatriots Per Fly, Nicolas Winding Refn and Lars von Trier before him, the time has come for Thomas Vinterberg to take on the miniseries format. Families Like Ours [+see also:
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
series profile], world-premiering out of competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, is the first work by the Berlin-, Cannes- and Oscar-honoured Dane’s to visit The Floating City.

Fittingly so, as water plays a seminal part in Vinterberg’s seven-part saga. In a modern-looking future, Denmark faces a natural disaster, with rising sea levels soon rendering the country uninhabitable and about six million Danes homeless and stateless. Costly dam and drainage systems keep the flooding temporarily at bay while a government-funded evacuation/relocation programme is put into action. Meanwhile, in a critical escalation, the neighbouring and nearby borders of Germany, France, the UK and the Nordics are being closed to “refugees, immigrants and families like ours”, as the headmaster at 19-year-old Laura’s upper-middle-class-area school so accurately phrases it.

And as the soothing serenity of spring sinks in and the unmistakeable smell of grass fills the Danish air, a population at the top of the world’s political stability and happiness rankings prepares for unknown tomorrows. At summer’s end, they’ll be sent off and crammed into ferry cabins, buses and transit centres, their entire life in a suitcase.

Laura (Amaryllis August) and her nearest and dearest constitute the core of the tale: her father, Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a prominent architect (most Danish families have one); his wife, Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumann); her brother, Nikolaj (Esben Smed), a Foreign Ministry staff member; his husband Henrik (Magnus Millang), a wealthy landowner; Fanny (Paprika Steen), Jacob’s ex-wife and Laura’s mother; and Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt), Laura’s schoolmate and first great love. Adding support and/or disruption are evil brother Peter (David Dencik); hot-headed, warm-hearted uncle Holger (Thomas Bo Larsen); and little Lucas (Max Kaysen Høyrup), a child football prodigy with eerily psychic abilities (some Danish series have one – especially when “chaos reigns”). In short, a broad and colourful palette of protagonists, played by a top-notch cast, delivering likewise top-notch performances.

And how does the auteur behind Festen and Another Round [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] handle this epic scope and similarly epic concept, a contender in a national arena with a tradition of innovative and acclaimed series (The Kingdom, The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge) stretching back decades? Admirably well, and with his distinct personal signature, would be the immediate response – and on occasion even poetically and romantically. For though Vinterberg and co-writer Bo Hr Hansen certainly put their characters through some harsh ordeals, there’s a noticeable tenderness encompassing both our little family in the story and our little Denmark on the whole, to which Families Like Ours can be seen as a heartfelt love letter. As things look increasingly desolate, intercut footage shows World War II liberation scenes from Copenhagen in 1945. We got this, folks – things may be desperate, but not hopeless. In the trying and uncertain meantime (a sequel may be called for one day), one wishes the Danish grass, the letters æ and ø, the chiming of the Rådhuspladsen City Hall bells and families like Laura’s a warm and sincere “Kom godt hjem” – “Get home safe!”

Families Like Ours is a Danish-Swedish-French-Belgian co-production staged by Zentropa Entertainments, StudioCanal, Canal+, TV2 Denmark and Saga Film. Its sales are managed by StudioCanal.