Thomas Vinterberg talks climate change miniseries ‘A Family Like Us’

The outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011 triggered an influx of refugees into Europe. Thomas Vinterberg I sympathize with the millions of families who have been forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in foreign countries. Oscar-winning director Another round, hunting, and celebration Seeing the reactions of many Europeans — often hostile and sometimes violent — he began to wonder: What would happen if a disaster happened closer to home and “we became refugees”?

More than a decade later, this “thought experiment” led to A family like ours. This miniseries was released on Venice Film Festival Before heading to the Toronto International Film Festival, he imagines a near future in which rising sea levels force the Danish government to evacuate the entire country. The country’s six million residents become refugees, forced to seek asylum in any country that will take them in.

The series cast includes well-known Danish actors including Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Thomas Bo Larsen, David Dencik, Paprika Steen and Magnus Millang. Produced by StudioCanal and Zentropa, the six-part series will be broadcast on Danish TV2 in October. StudioCanal’s series are popular all over the world.

Working with The Hollywood ReporterIn the film, Vinterberg explains why he eschewed “disaster movie cliches” to focus on human tragedies like climate change and mass migration, creating a “slow-motion dystopia,” and how a rude French waiter inspired the show.

It’s a dystopian story, even a little sci-fi, but it also seems to be a very personal one. A family like ours From?

The idea came to me at least six years ago, before the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine. It came from seeing how we treat people coming to Copenhagen from Syria. I wanted to do a thought experiment to test people in Western society and think about what would happen if we were refugees, if we had to say goodbye to everything we loved? How resilient would we be? How many coping strategies would we come up with? It’s like: if your lifeboat only had four seats, who would you put on it? The psychological issues that bothered me the most were also the backbone of this series, which is why I didn’t want to show any scenes of floods and natural disasters.

But what really inspired me to write this series was when I went to Paris for work. I lived there for a year and a half and felt very unwelcome. I went to the same cafe every day and they were still very rude to me, like a tourist. One Sunday, I just wanted to go home to my family, and I missed my girls so much that I started thinking about what it would be like if we were forced to separate, like in Movie Brooklynwhich tells the story of the mass immigration from Europe to the United States in the 1950s. I think about my daughters and am inspired by their concerns about the state of the planet and climate change.

As you said, there are no natural disaster scenes here. No disaster porn. But did you do any research into the science of climate change or other elements of the story?

We did a lot of research, not about climate change, but about another kind of research. We did research on the situation in Denmark. What would our Foreign Ministry do if such a disaster happened here? Of course, you can’t do research into the future because it hasn’t happened yet, but we interviewed a lot of people and tried to imagine, how would this country, this small county where I come from, react? We decided that we would react as early as possible before the floods overwhelmed the whole country. We would try to take care of all our citizens, and instead of spending a lot of money to save parts of the country, we would save as many people as possible in the best way possible. I also talked to people who knew about climate change, and we talked about dams and drainage systems, where the water would come from and how the country would drain it. But it was still just speculation, even the experts were speculating. They knew something was going to happen, but exactly what would happen and in what form, even the experts were still speculating.

It’s a story about family, which gives it universality. But it’s also specific to Denmark, and I wondered if Denmark was a country to watch for mass immigration stories, politically speaking. Because Denmark was one of the first countries in Europe to really start cracking down on immigration and emigration, almost setting an example for the rest of Europe.

First of all, I want to say that my series here is primarily about human beings, and how these individuals react in different ways. As Rilke said, “There is no uniform way for human beings to react.” There are thousands of ways to react. I care about the bravery of refugees and things like that. But your question is particularly painful for me, and it really hits home. Because when I was growing up in Denmark, we had a very different reputation. When I received my first awards with Celebration, one of them was in Los Angeles, the Jewish Award for Denmark’s help to Jewish refugees during World War II. Denmark smuggled people from German-occupied countries to safety in Sweden. That was our society. Then, in 2016, our government destroyed that story and became a country that I was no longer proud of. We made a law that could confiscate jewelry from refugees at the border. I thought it was so inhumane, I couldn’t believe it. I publicly said that I was ashamed of my country, and I had a public argument with a Danish journalist about it. It was a very painful time. There are echoes of that in A Family Like Ours. I think our country has come out of that dark period, and hopefully our identity will be restored at some point. But there are definitely echoes of that in my story, where I try to turn that around and say, “Well, if us “Where are the refugees?” There’s a sense of satisfaction in that, too.

There is this idea of ​​”Fortress Europe” all over Europe. Political forces in almost every country seem to want to build walls and keep people out. This idea of ​​a unified, borderless Europe still exists to some extent, but now it is being strictly defined based on who you are and where you are from.

But if we talk about fortresses, this is not just a local phenomenon, a European phenomenon, or a Danish phenomenon. It is more universal than that. Look at the fortresses in the United States, they are building a wall, not tearing down a wall. This is the agenda for the whole world. That’s why I find it interesting to reverse the status quo and put Westerners in refugee status.

As you said, you avoided cliché disaster scenes. So what was the most challenging thing for you about making this film?

Now, how to position this show as a human drama was a challenge. It could be a disaster show, but it’s a slow-motion disaster show. This show takes place in seven countries that I don’t know. So we did a lot of research to make everything reasonable. It was a huge challenge. We did a lot of test screenings with the audience, and they kept asking questions like, “Why is there no water in the streets and they are moving out of the country?” Questions like that. So we had to find a way to let the audience know that in a well-functioning Western country like Denmark, this is how it would be. We would know in advance that the water would come, and we wouldn’t wait until the floods receded. We didn’t believe that things would develop like this. We didn’t think that was realistic. But after months of research, reaching a consensus with the audience, figuring out how to explain this was very difficult.

Does the research involve how different countries will deal with the large number of Danish refugees?

Yes, but you can never tell exactly how a country will react, because the only universal thing you can say about human beings is that when there is a crisis, when you feel threatened, there is a retreat. You withdraw, you find the people closest to you, you start to protect yourself. That creates aggression. You can see that Poland is very kind, generous and welcoming to Ukrainian refugees. But if Poland is flooded with foreigners, as our world will be in the future, it will cause a crisis, retreat and aggression. (But) there are also many generous elements in this play. The core of the play is a girl who sacrifices her life, her career, everything to help her mother. And Elias (Albert Rudebeck Lindhart), who travels across continents to be with a girl who abandoned him.

After making this series, do you feel more hopeful or less hopeful about the future?

Well, it’s a bit like asking why do we keep flying? Why do I keep flying and buying new clothes and all those things that are going to destroy our planet when I know it’s going to destroy our planet? But I guess it’s because it’s the best thing we can do. It’s something we can’t deal with, it’s just too big a disaster. So we refocus on our own little selves and our own little worlds. I think that’s really interesting. There’s an element of forgiveness in that because it’s the best thing we can do. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s the best thing we can do.

Have you ever gone back to that café in France and thanked that rude waiter for the inspiration he gave you?

I didn’t, he would say, and he would probably say, “Who the f**k are you?” and insult me ​​in French.

Watch the trailer A family like ours the following.