Multi-award winning film director Thomas Vinterberg's first television series intertwines multiple stories as a near-future Denmark faces the unthinkable: rising water levels mean the entire country has to be evacuated. Friends and families face difficult choices, loved ones are separated. Some will struggle, others may find a new beginning.
The seven-part series, a huge hit in Denmark (and with a standing ovation at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival), boats an impressive line-up in front of the camera and behind it.
Vinterberg, known for a long list of films, including the acclaimed The Celebration (1998), It's All About Love (2003), the Academy Award- and Gold Globe-nominated and BAFTA-winning The Hunt (2012), starring Mads Mikkelsen, Far From the Madding Crowd (2015) and his 2020 Oscar-winner, Another Round (see it at SBS on Demand), conceived the idea of this sweeping 'what if' saga and served as director and co-writer, bringing Bo. Hr Hansen (Bullshit – also streaming at SBS On Demand, The Art of Crying, Journal 64) on board to share the screenwriting effort. The series also saw Vinterberg team up with the award-winning cinematographer he worked with on Another Round, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (War Sailor, Victoria).
Star-studded cast
On-screen, the cast boasts a raft of Scandinavian acting talent, including leading Danish stage and screen actress Paprika Steen (The Celebration, Silent Heart, Nightwatch: Demons are Forever); multi-award-winning actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas, whose Danish and international CV includes Lars von Trier's The Idiots, The Kingdom: Exodus, a series of Department Q films (based on a series of best-selling books that have also had an English-language remake this year) and popular TV series The Killing; Helene Reingaard Neumann (Worlds Apart, Another Round); actor-comedian Magnus Millang (Another Round, Borgen); Esben Smed (The Kiss, The Sweetest Gift); David Dencik (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Prisoner); and Thomas Bo Larsen (The Hunt, Another Round.
Laura (Amaryllis August), centre, with her parents Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Fanny (Paprika Steen). Credit: Per Arnesen / Zentropa Entertainments
The series follows a family and their connections as their world turns upside down. At the heart of the show is 19-year-old Laura, played by first-time actress Amaryllis August, whom Vinterberg describes as "incredible". In her final year of school, Laura is excited about everything the future has to offer: travel to other countries, myriad choices of career, burgeoning first love with her classmate Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). Laura’s father, Jacob (Kaas), is a successful architect who leads a happy life with his second wife, Amalie (Reingaard Neumann).
Fanny (Steen), Laura’s mother is a science journalist living alone. Amalie’s brother, Nikolaj (Smed), is a government employee with insider knowledge of the impending flooding and the plans for evacuation. Along with his husband, Henrik (Millang), Nikolaj is attempting to sell off as many assets as possible and make it out of the country without his actions – which would lead to almost certain imprisonment – being detected. There's also Holger (Larsen), Fanny’s brother who refuses to accept his country’s closure; and Peter (Dencik), Henrik’s scheming older brother who suddenly finds himself in need of help from the sibling he’s bullied all his life.
Before it all changes: Henrik (Magnus Millang) and Nikolaj (Esben Smed). Credit: Per Arnesen / Zentropa Entertainments
“In filmmaking, there has to be a sense of everyone relying on each other,” he says. “This is a very naked, vulnerable process and I need to work with people with whom I can be very honest. I need them to feel free to make mistakes and to understand that if they do something that doesn’t work, it’s OK, because we’re all on the same team. We’re in it together and we’re going to make it work together. I want an environment where everything is completely transparent and we’re all unafraid to be ambitious. That is hugely helped by working with people you know and with whom you have mutual respect.”
“Thomas is a very good listener,” says Kaas, who plays Jacob, a man willing do to almost anything to get a job in Paris that will protect his family. “He’s very interested in what you have to say, but also very clear in what he wants. He’s really open-minded when you come to him with suggestions and always happy to listen to a different approach. That’s what I love about him. This was the first time I’ve worked with him and it was a very, very happy experience.”
Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumann) arrive in Paris. Credit: Manuel Clkaro / Zentropa Entertainements
A new face
There are many in the cast who, like Kaas, are very experienced actors but new to working with Vinterberg, but there was also one actor new not just to Vinterberg but to the entire acting industry. Laura is the first professional role for Amaryllis August. It was a challenging debut. Laura’s life begins as many teenage lives do, with thoughts of friends, an exciting future, and the thrill of first love. But through the series everything Laura knows falls apart. The role asks enormous amounts of any actor, let alone one making her screen debut. August had six years of experience as a professional model but none as an actress.
“We looked at a lot of young actresses for this role,” says Vinterberg. “Amaryllis had this beautiful balance of being delicate and truthful, yet with the ability to fully inhabit the character’s more dramatic moments.
“In the beginning, she was understandably quite shy,” he says, “but she had a natural talent and a natural ability to convey her thoughts through just her eyes.” The pair worked together over weeks, ahead of shooting, to immerse August in Laura’s life and help her to understand on an instinctive level how this initially innocent and comfortable girl would behave when faced with life-threatening situations and heart-rending choices.
“I have no experience to talk from, so I don’t know what other directors might be like,” says August, “but Thomas gave me lots of room to do my own thing, while also keeping a watchful eye on me and telling me what did and didn’t work. It was really lovely.”
Amaryllis August amongst a group of Danish refugees in 'Families Like Ours'. Credit: Per Arnesen / Zentropa Entertainments
“Thomas is an incredible perfectionist,” adds August. “He would spend a lot of time to get the scene exactly as he wanted it. I love that about him. It’s incredible to work with him.”
Amaryllis August and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in 'Families Like Ours'. Credit: Per Arnesen / Zentropa Entertainments
Laura’s journey takes her through such physically taxing ordeals, trudging through freezing remote areas of Romania, and battling with people-smugglers, that the shoot was also an endurance test of sorts for August. “She had to go to the gym and do boxing training to be fit and ready for this very long shoot,” says Vinterberg. By the time shooting began, August was so thoroughly prepared that she embraced everything Vinterberg asked of her. “Her character is crying, being thrown in the mud – going through very difficult things. Amaryllis never complained once. She is such a trooper. She worked and worked and worked. She loved it. She was truly incredible.”
“Working with Amaryllis, it’s almost like you’re not acting, because what she does is so real,” says Kaas. “It’s fascinating to watch. And it’s very easy to act opposite someone like that.”
Families like us
Vinterberg says he drew on elements of people he has known to create this wide cast of characters. "Everything comes out of observing real people.”
He chose to depict a comfortable upper middle-class family because “they are like the people I spend my days with – people like myself – and they are very privileged people. I thought it was interesting to see how these people would survive? What would this take from them, this great fall?”
Life alters forever for Fanny (Paprika Steen). Credit: Julie Vrabelova / Zentropa Entertainments
The wide cast allowed Vinterberg to explore many answers to this question. Jacob, a proud man who is used to being able to provide for his family and who enjoys the status his job brings, has to confront the loss of that status and the possibility that in another country he may be no more important than anyone else. In turn, Amalie learns to take charge and claim independence as her family – and extended family – crumbles around her. For Fanny, the end of Denmark is the end of a dark chapter in her life; what might she find in a new land?
"Families Like Ours is a saga about saying goodbye and about longing, but also about hope and new beginnings. It is a declaration of love to my country – and to the resilience and unity of mankind," Vinterberg says.
This is an edited version of material supplied by Zentropa Entertainments / Studiocanal.
Families Like Ours is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Thomas Vinterberg's award-winning film Another Round is also streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Another Round
