Families Like Ours (Familier Som Vores) Review: Vinterberg Does It Again

Families Like Ours (Familier Som Vores)’s brilliant premise is exactly what it takes for Europe to understand the refugee crisis, in a marvel of a series that brims with humanity and puts its characters first.

The show doesn’t waste any time introducing us to its central premise. As an announcement urges Danes to be patient, we see a ship waiting at a dock, and passengers driving and walking to it. “The eastern corridor through Poland only has a 36-hour window,” says the voice on the radio, reminding everyone that Danish passports will no longer be issued and even the country’s currency won’t be valid for long. A girl arrives at the dock and gets out of her car, looking at the boat with an air of worry and resolve, in a scene that reminded me of Kate Winslet’s Rose preparing to board the titular boat in Titanic. And though James Cameron’s epic is an entirely different movie, there are still some parallels to be found, as here, too, it might all eventually come down to metaphorical seats on a lifeboat.

In fact, we barely have time to take this all in that we’re taken back to a more familiar world, six months earlier, where a Ministry of Foreign Affair employee locks himself in a bathroom stall, right after a meeting, and sends someone a text: “They’re gonna f*cking do it.”

The text refers to Denmark quite literally “closing down the country;” not long later, we learn that the rising sea levels, a consequence of global warming, have gotten so bad that the whole country needs to be evacuated. And though the universe in which Families Like Ours takes place is not that different from our own, a few things have happened that might lead Europe to close its borders to asylum seekers soon, making things even more complicated for the six million Danes who are about to become refugees.

It’s a simple premise, yet it’s exactly what it takes for citizens of privileged countries to really understand the refugee crisis. What if we were the ones forced to leave the familiarity of our homes and seek asylum elsewhere? What would become of our privilege and wealth when our property is worthless, our money inaccessible, and our right to live in the same country as our children and parents stripped away from us? Families Like Ours explores all this and more, but what’s even more impressive is that it never feels preachy or manipulative. Vinterberg and co-writer Bo Hr. Hansen (The Art of Crying) send their message across in an unequivocally clear way, but they never forget to put their characters first. By the time the finale’s credits roll, what you’ll remember are the people with whom you embarked on this journey, and how much each of them grew as a human being.

Several characters make up the gripping tale that is Families Like Ours, but at the center of it all is Laura (Amaryllis August), who’s about to graduate from high school but is more concerned with a crush she’s recently developed for a boy named Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt, of Another Round). She has a great relationship with her mother, Fanny (Paprika Steen), who used to be a journalist but was signed off work due to stress, and spends most of her time at home. Laura lives with her architect father Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, of Riders of Justice), his second wife Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumann), and the young son the two have together.

Amalie’s brother, government employee Nikolaj (Esben Smed, of Held for Ransom) – the man who sends the text message in episode 1 – is married to Henrik (Magnus Millang, of Another Round and Borgen), who has a scheming, homophobic brother named Peter (David Dencik). And then there’s football prodigy Lucas (Max Kaysen Høyrup), a precocious young boy who’s very special to Laura, and who, together with his mother Christel (Asta Kamma August), will soon have to make a very difficult choice.

These are the characters at the center of Families Like Ours, and each comes with a series of internal conflicts that make the show gripping from the very start. What would you do if you knew about the situation in advance? Would you sell all your belongings and risk facing prison for your actions? Would you – and should you – tell your family, or would you save yourself first? What if, when the time came to decide which country to move to, you didn’t have the right job or enough money to choose where you would spend the rest of your life? And what if, as you were waiting to leave, your country turned violent, but there were no authorities left to keep you safe? How would you protect yourself in a lawless place, and how would you take responsibility for your actions?

What if pursuing your dream, or even having a normal life, would mean never seeing your family again? What if you were wealthy enough to move to the country of your choice only to find yourself unemployed and with no permit? Would your connections still matter, or would they treat you differently? And what if someone you cared about got lost along the way, and the only way to save them was risking your own life?

These are only some of the questions Vinterberg asks us to think about over the course of the series’ seven episodes, and it’s best if you find out how he does it on your own, as part of Families Like Ours‘s beauty is letting it surprise you, and take you to places – both metaphorical and physical ones – you won’t see coming, for every single one of its protagonists. All cast members shine in a show that manages to be, at the same time, tense, lighthearted, funny, and thought-provoking, with dystopian elements that make it such an addictive watch and a powerful emotional core that will hit you at exactly the right time.

“København, Du er kun alt jeg har” (“Copenhagen, you’re all that I have”), sing Ulige Numre in “København,” a song whose notes can be heard, in different ways, throughout the series, and that ultimately sends Vinterberg’s message across: regardless of where we end up, all that matters, in the end, is family.

Families Like Ours (Familier Som Vores) had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2024 and will be screened at TIFF on September 14 and at the London Film Festival on October 11. The series will be available to stream in Denmark on TV 2 on October 20, 2024. Read our review of Another Round.