Series – “Families Like Our”: Problems of our world

There are words that describe our time very well. Climate refugees are one of them. Director Thomas Vinterberg (“Der Rausch”) dedicates his first series “Familie Like Oours – not without you”. He effortlessly embeds problems of climate change, criticism of capitalism and refugee policy in a family saga. Both the setting and the figures are credibly created. Especially the reality aspect hits.

“Familie Like Ours” will play in Denmark in the near future. Since the sea level continues to rise, the whole country is evacuated. From then on everyone has to make for their new life. If you can afford it, choose a target country, others are dependent on government programs.

If you can afford it, choose a target country, others are dependent on government programs.

The individual figures are well chosen. The focus is on 19-year-old protagonist Laura (new discovery: Amaryllis August), who grows up in a patchwork family. The social scissors are clearly visible between the parents. Laura’s mother (Paprika Steen), once a successful journalist, is on sick leave due to stress. Her father Jakob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), on the other hand, works as a renowned architect; Jakobs brother -in -law Nikolaj (Esben Smed) sits as deputy head of the migration office at the source of information and lives with his husband Henrik (Magnus Millang) in a huge manor house.

The series tells of all of them. The crisis situation is more pussy by the result: property is no longer worth anything due to the emergency situation, the banks are overwhelmed, and the anger of the citizens grows while the country is preparing for the shutdown. Right in the middle of all the chaos, Laura and Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt) have a head over head. When you meet, time lasts for you. A nice scene: the two face each other in the school corridor and look into their eyes while all other students pass them like a current.

And so Vinterberg also tells a coming-of-age story about a youth that was robbed by the climate crisis of its future. In the course of the series, the light -flooded images are replaced by dark, increasingly radical scenarios, captured with the camera by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen and Manuel Alberto Claro.

Director Thomas Vinterberg, who wrote the series over eight years ago, crashed into hard realities when planning the series. Originally he wanted to shoot in Kyiv, but that was before the war in Ukraine. Time got him. The Corona pandemic was still in a distance. Now we are in the middle of the crisis determined by war, capitalism and climate. While we hope for stricter climate specifications these days, Vinterberg in “Familie Like Ours” strengthens the consequences of the climate crisis and presents a country that will sink into the floods.

The script by Thomas Vinterberg and Bo Hr. Hansen is inspired by reality: in Denmark the sea level and groundwater actually rise. In order to remind you, the Danish broadcaster TV2 has set up parking benches with a height of 1.35 meters in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense. You can’t dangle with your feet in the water yet.

While there is a strict migration policy in Denmark, the director confronts his main characters with it. In this case, they are the refugees and have to find a place in countries that gradually close their limits. In the series, prosperity is fragile. Anyone who makes the right decisions will win land more quickly. False decisions, on the other hand, can have fatal consequences. Vinterberg is to be granted that he takes his characters seriously, but he does not remain loyal to them. Sometimes he puts the plot over the characters, and that is not particularly good for the series.

Available in the ARD media library.