VENICE 2024 :: FIRST LOOK
TV2 Denmark backs Families Like Ours

By Michael Pickard, TV2 & Variety
July 23, 2024

“Countries disappear, love remains.”

The country which perishes is Denmark in a not-too-distant future. That scenario rings nightmarishly realistic, especially since the “storm of the century” hit Denmark in October, with the sea level rise exceeding two meters along the coast. --Variety

I did “Families Like Ours” together with my co-writer Bo Hr. Hansen as an experiment saying: “How do we grasp how much we love what we have?” We can learn that by saying we’re going to lose it. --Vinterberg (Variety)

Thomas Vinterberg’s epic Danish drama Families Like Ours will launch locally on TV2 later this year following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.



‘Another Round’ Director Thomas Vinterberg's first series, ‘Families Like Ours,’ tells a Tale of Love, ‘Resilience and Hope’ Despite National Catastrophe.

‘FAMILIES LIKE OURS’ is a grandiose and intimate family drama about a nation forced to say goodbye to the homeland. A riveting tale of the pain of farewells and a testimony to the unyielding will of human beings to survive, hope and love.

The first TV drama from Oscar and Bafta-winning director Vinterberg (The Hunt, Another Round), it is set in Denmark in the not-too-distant future, where rising water levels can no longer be ignored and the country needs to be evacuated. As people disperse in all directions, they must bid farewell to what they love, what they know, and who they are.

Slowly but steadily, everything is different. All property becomes worthless, all fortunes change, and luck favours only a few. Those who can afford it travel to affluent countries while the less well-off depend on government-funded relocation to more challenging destinations. Families, friends, and loved ones are separated. Some will be overcome by hatred and division while others will nurture love and foster new beginnings.

In the series, as water levels rise inexorably, the country is evacuated. Suddenly, Denmark implodes. With property worthless, most Danes are plunged into desperate poverty.

Against this backdrop, high school student Laura is in love for the first time and on the cusp of graduation. When news of the evacuation breaks, the course of Laura and her family’s lives are changed forever, and Laura is forced into the impossible dilemma of choosing between the three people she loves the most.



Laura’s dad, successful architect Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), may have a chance of scoring a plush job in Paris. Her mom, unemployed and clinically stressed science journalist Fanny (Paprika Steen), looks set to be shipped out like most Danes to a more challenging destination such as a shabby high-rise suburb of Bucharest with eight people per apartment and a dormitory bedroom. Laura, angling for a Sorbonne residency, may have to choose between the two and Elías.

Making a series about the end of our world here in Denmark, I’m trying to create a tale about resilience and hope. I felt that youth was representing that. I actually grabbed that element of electricity, naivety and youth shooting “Another Round.” I always enjoyed shooting Mads Mikkelsen but I really enjoyed it when the camera panned left and I saw all of these youngsters with like a sense of ignition. I wanted to bring them into the series as carriers of hope for the future. After all, this whole thing began with me missing my daughters. --Vinterberg (Variety)

Written by Vinterberg and Bo Hr Hansen (Darkness: Those Who Kill), the series is produced by Zentropa Entertainments for TV2 Denmark, Studiocanal and CANAL+, in coproduction with NRK, TV4, ARD Degeto, coproduced by Film i Väst, Sirena Film, Zentropa Sweden, Saga Film and Ginger Pictures, in collaboration with CANAL+ Poland and M7.

That’s just the initial set-up. Employing over 40 actors in addition to the big main cast and 2,500 extras, the seven-part series shot in five countries for nearly a year: Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Romania and France.

Studiocanal is coproducer and distributor of the seven-part series.

tagged in: Canal+, Families like ours, StudioCanal, Thomas Vinterberg, TV2 Denmark