‘Families Like Ours’ Director Thomas Vinterberg On His Apocalyptic Series: “I Started Thinking, What Would Happen If We Became The Refugees?”

While the issue of refugees and economic migrants continues to dominate world headlines, Denmark’s Thomas Vinterberg has found an ingenious way to turn the situation on its head. With his seven-part series Families Like Ours, Vinterberg posits an imagined but not too far-fetched scenario in which his homeland is forced, literally, to close down. Flooding is coming, but, rather than wait, the government has been cooking up a plan to rehouse those who don’t have the resources to flee to Europe’s wealthier countries.

Drawing on the realistic but empathetic style shown in films such as Festen, It’s All About Love and Another Round, for which he won an Oscar, Vinterberg casts his eye over a handful of protagonists caught up in the madness. At the center is Amaryllis August as Laura, a high-school girl who is experiencing the first bloom of love when the story breaks, forcing her to choose between her father and his new family, her pill-popping mother (the wonderful Paprika Steen) and her boyfriend when the country’s population of 6 million gets its marching orders. With the apocalypse encroaching at a glacial pace, Vinterberg focuses on the ordinary people in its path; all human life is there, including a working-class boy whose footballing ambitions secure an apprenticeship at Liverpool FC in the U.K.

Before the show’s world premiere in Venice, Deadline sat down with the director.

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DEADLINE: Where did this idea first come from?

THOMAS VINTERBERG: Six years ago, I was in Paris. I was working there. It was Sunday. I missed my family. I felt lonesome, I felt rejected by Paris. [Laughs.] I’d gone to the same cafe many times over more than a year, and they still reacted to me as if I was a stranger, as a tourist. And I started thinking about my daughters and what they were occupied with — they have these great worries about our planet. Back in the day, it used to be the case that human beings were afraid of what nature would do to them, like, would lightning strike? And now we’ve changed. We’ve become nervous about what we are doing to the planet. There’s been a shift, and I guess the idea came out of that. I started thinking, What would happen if we became the refugees instead of the others? What would happen if we were to leave our country and what we hold dear?

I was also inspired by [John Crowley’s 2015 film] Brooklyn, and all the songs about leaving your country and moving abroad to America. It became this existential survey in my mind. I was less interested in the politics of it. I wasn’t interested in making sort of a ‘climate-warning’ series. It’s going to be called that in places, I’m sure, but I’m hoping not too often, because this is more about human resilience, about how humans can create coping strategies when there’s a crisis and when they’re being separated from what they love.

DEADLINE: is there any truth in the scenario that you depict in the series?

VINTERBERG: This is a thought experiment. We don’t know about the future. We don’t know about the weather. We don’t know how things are going to be. So, I guess, yes, of course it’s a possibility, but I’m not saying it is geologically plausible that it would happen within the next five to 10 years. This is meant to be a story about how we would react in a crisis. Who would you fit into your lifeboat in a situation like this? If you had to choose. Let’s say you’ve only got three seats, and your family is more than that. What would you do? Who would you help? Would you have the generosity to sacrifice yourself?

DEADLINE: What was the writing process like? How many iterations did you go through to come down to the characters that you finally went with?

VINTERBERG: It started with me looking out my window. Who do I have around me? And then imagination took over. This was, like, four years ago. It’s complete fiction, all of it. Ideas are not something you buy or control or prepare. An idea is just something you get from somewhere, and it’s very difficult to describe where it comes from. I guess it comes from a desire, of some kind, and curiosity. I like being in rich people’s properties. I like guns, and I’m attracted to youth: the hope, and the naivety, and the force of youth. So, I guess it’s a lot about attraction and curiosity.

DEADLINE: Are you a football fan as well? Did you ever have a dream of playing for Liverpool?

VINTERBERG: No, my wife is a football fan. She’s the one sitting with a can of beer, screaming, slapping my back when there’s a goal. But I’m being trained into becoming a soccer fan. You’re a Brit, so meeting a man that is not a soccer fan must be strange!

DEADLINE: What’s interesting about your series is that it’s so Danish, it almost becomes British, because the two societies are very similar.

VINTERBERG: That’s a very important thing you’re saying, because you’re one of the first people to ever see this. So, I’m hoping it travels.

DEADLINE: One of the most horrifying things that British people can ever imagine is that their house might not be worth what they paid for it. Judging by what happens in your series, it’s the same in Denmark. In a funny way, Families Like Ours is kind of a horror movie. Would you agree?

VINTERBERG: I have to. I kind of think it’s a horror movie too, but I also think it’s about, as I said, resilience and love, and people who cross continents for love. And I find that, particularly, the youth in this drama represents hope and the ability to recover. It’s like crisis makes people greedy, makes people aggressive and defensive, but then empathy comes back. There’s a wedding at the end of this series, which I think represents the vision of a new world coming together.

DEADLINE: It’s a little like Melancholia by your fellow countryman, Lars von Trier. Obviously, it’s not quite the same thing, but it is a kind of meditation on the end of the world.

VINTERBERG: That’s funny because the first half of Melancholia is this big party, right? Lars called me when he was writing it, and he said, “I’m going to rip you off, Thomas. From Festen.” And I was like, “OK, dude, just make sure it’s not as good.” [Laughs.] I think he kept that promise in the first half, but the second half was some of the best work he’s ever done, I think, which was the end of the world, basically. And so, you’re right, I might have gotten some inspiration from there. I just don’t think this [scenario] is the end of the world.

DEADLINE You’ve said that it’s all imagination, it’s all from your mind. But did you do any kind of research into what actually might happen in this sort of situation?

VINTERBERG: An enormous amount. It was like being in a swamp. Because we’re talking about the future. It was particularly interested in finding out about how the state would react. I did not find it plausible that the Kingdom of Denmark, being like the prepared little hobbits in the Shire, would just wait for the water to come and then run like madmen. We would prepare. We would try to take care of as much as we could, of everyone, at least that’s what we would say. And then there would be a lot of injustice anyway.

So hence the slow-motion catastrophe movie. We would be ahead of time. There wouldn’t be water in the streets. We would be out of here before that. So, I talked to a lot of people about what would then happen. They would create a corridor through Europe. I talked to people about what would happen to the borders of Europe. Is it plausible that they would close the borders? The borders would close if there were too many. We did a lot of research into different countries. How would French immigration react and how could we imagine that? Bucharest in Romania becomes a kind of Babel Tower in our series. They make a living from it. They sell beds and rooms to people and welcome them, which I think is more plausible to happen in Romania than in France. They would protect themselves.

It’s about guessing and research, guessing and research. You could never find facts because it’s about future, but we did a lot of research anyway. And we also did a lot of research about water, and they said something at that point but that has changed now because when we started six years ago, this country was dry and now it’s wet. So, this is developing in a pace that is unpredictable, I guess.

DEADLINE: Did your research scare you in any way? Has it made you more paranoid about what might happen?

VINTERBERG: We started pre-COVID, and then suddenly a lot of things played out in COVID that we had in our script, like government press briefings and stuff. And then suddenly there’s all the flooding in Third World countries. This was a crazy fantasy six years ago, and now people are not really spooked by it because it looks a little bit like what they see in the news. That’s scary.

DEADLINE: Can you talk about the casting of this movie? I’m thinking particularly of Laura here. What were you looking for when you cast Amaryllis August in that role?

VINTERBERG: Laura was different in my script, but it wasn’t finished at that time we started casting, but I was halfway through when I found her, and then I rewrote it for her. She’s much more pure, like a crystal vase, in the final series. She was more outspoken in the beginning. But casting first-timers is one process, and casting actors that you have a relationship with is a different ball game. With the grown-up parts, I asked the actors very early in the process, so that I could write for them. That’s how I like to do things. But with the youngsters, they came in later and there was a long rehearsal period. They had to adjust to each other, to the actors playing their parents. They had to be able to fight, have sex, and live through a year of shooting. So, there was a lot of preparation going on.

DEADLINE: So, to recap, how long did it all take?

VINTERBERG: Well, it’s like you plant a seed, you have an idea, and then you go to and fro with it. Roughly, it took me a year to write, a year to shoot, and then another year to edit.

DEADLINE: Would you return to this world or is this just a one-off?

VINTERBERG: I don’t have plans for that. I don’t have a second season in mind. I do find the scenes in Bucharest — this Babel’s Tower full of people — an interesting melting pot for my imagination. But, no, there no plans for a second season. I have other things.

DEADLINE: Are you going back to movies?

VINTERBERG: I have some ideas for movies that I’m in development with. And I’m also developing a series for an American company from a book that’s almost a Bible in Scandinavia. It’s by Astrid Lindgren, and it’s called The Brothers Lionheart. So yeah, I’m in development with several things and I have some ideas of my own as well.

DEADLINE: How do you think Families Like Ours fits into your filmography?

VINTERBERG: The few people who’ve seen it says it’s very Vinterbergian, which… [Laughs.] I don’t know what means, actually, but I guess it means there’s a lot of elements that represent my attractions in filmmaking. It’s a better question for you, or for someone else who’s seen my other movies, because I’m in the middle of it. It’s not like I’m mapping out what is me and what is not me.

DEADLINE: How do your family feel about it? I mean, it’s called Families Like Ours. Have you shown it to them?

VINTERBERG: They’re coming to Venice to see it for the first time. But I sent a streamer to my sister, who’s very emotional. She loved it, but she was freaked out by it because it felt so real to her. It felt like something that could happen. The rest haven’t seen it. It’s new, man. It’s fresh. You’re one of the first ones.

DEADLINE: Is this your first time in Venice?

VINTERBERG: It’s my first time in Venice, yeah. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a town that has coped with water for so many generations, so I find it — ironically enough — actually kind of hopeful to be in Venice.

DEADLINE: Is there anything in particular that you would like audiences to come away thinking?

VINTERBERG: There’s a couple of questions that I would like them to have ringing in their mind, one of which is, of course, who would fit into your lifeboat? What would you do in this case? The other one is this: Why do we keep flying, buying new clothes and eating meat when we know that it’s wrong? It’s an interesting question, and I can forgive everyone for doing it because I’m doing it myself. The boat is sinking, but we’re still having dinner. But I don’t want people to feel hopeless. I want them to be inspired by the resilience and the strength and the bravery of these people. That’s more important.

DEADLINE: Just one more question. What would you do in this situation? Where would you go?

VINTERBERG: If the country were to close down?

DEADLINE: Yes. Where would you go?

VINTERBERG: Well, I would skip Paris! [Laughs.] I would probably go to Norway. They have snow and mountains and a lot of money. They have a big film industry. They even have a Trier there — Joachim Trier. So, if they would let me in, I would probably go there.

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