With a filmmaking career that stretches back to 1990, Thomas Vinterberg has brought us such movies as The Biggest Heroes, It’s All About Love, Dear Wendy, When a Man Comes Home, Submarino, The Hunt, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Commune, The Command, and Another Round, among others. He has made some TV movies along the way, and now he has made his first TV series, a seven-episode show called Families Like Ours… and Deadline reports that the Netflix streaming service will be bringing Families Like Ours to the United States next week, on June 10th!
Vinterberg may be best known for co-founding (with Lars von Trier) the Dogma 95 movement, which created a list of rules “to create films based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, while excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology.”
Developed by Zentropa and Studiocanal, Families Like Ours is an original series for TV2 Denmark and Canal+ in France. Set in a not-too-distant future, it follows events after rising water levels force Denmark to be evacuated. Those who can afford it travel to affluent countries. The less well-off, meanwhile, depend on government-funded relocation to more challenging destinations, casting a new spin on a refugee story. Against this backdrop we meet Laura (Amaryllis August), a student on the cusp of graduation. When news of the evacuation breaks, she faces the impossible dilemma of choosing between the people she loves the most. The tagline: Countries disappear, love remains.
Vinterberg wrote the seven-episode series with Bo Hr. Hansen. Filming for the series took place in Denmark, Sweden, France, Romania, and the Czech Republic. Co-production partners include NRK, TV4, ARD Degeto, Film i Väst, Sirena Film, Zentropa Sweden, Saga Film, and Ginger Pictures. Another Round producers Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Kasper Dissing produced the series.
Vinterberg provided the following statement: “It’s wonderful how an inherently Danish series like Families Like Ours, through a platform like Netflix, can travel far and wide and strike a chord with audiences around the world. In this increasingly divided world, it gives me both joy and hope to see that there’s a universal language — a common ground rooted in shared human experiences. Hopefully, that sense of connection continues across the Atlantic.“
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