Latest news with #FamiliesLikeOurs
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Netflix Takes Thomas Vinterberg's Debut Series ‘Families Like Ours' For The U.S.
EXCLUSIVE: Having premiered at Venice in 2024, Thomas Vinterberg's drama Families Like Ours has been picked up by Netflix for the U.S. and will launch on the streamer on June 10. Families Like Ours is the first series from Vinterberg, the Oscar-winning Another Round filmmaker and co-founder of the Dogma 95 movement. The drama has already sold to the BBC in the UK and a raft of international buyers. Studiocanal is handling distribution and sealed the Netflix sale. More from Deadline Lady Gaga Closes Out Netflix's Tudum With Mesmerizing On-Theme 'Wednesday' Performance Featuring Viral Dance Lady Gaga's Cameo In 'Wednesday' Confirmed As Netflix Premieres Season 2 Footage 'Stranger Things': Netflix Reveals Premiere Date For Season 5, Split Into Three Volumes Zentropa developed Families Like Ours with Studiocanal and it 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. 'Countries disappear, love remains,' reads a description of the series. '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,' Vinterberg said. He added: '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.' The show was produced by Zentropa for TV2 in Denmark. The series had a solid festival run; after debuting at Venice in 2024, it played at Toronto and the London Film Festival. The show has already bowed on TV2 in Denmark. Vinterberg and wrote the seven-part series with Bo Hr. Hansen. It was shot in Denmark, Sweden, France, Romania, and the Czech Republic. There are a raft of co-production partners including 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. Families Like Ours also reunites Vinterberg and Zentropa with Studiocanal, which distributed Another Round in the UK. The Netflix deal follows sales to numerous broadcasters and platforms including Movistar Plus+ (Spain), CBC Gem (Canada) and SBS (Australia). 'With the support of CANAL+ and all of our partners we have taken great pride in bringing Vinterberg's deeply human and universal story of love and hope to such a wide audience,' said Chloé Marquet, Studiocanal's Head Of International Sales for Films & TV Series. 'Netflix is now the perfect place for the series to thrive and resonate far beyond borders.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Katie Holmes To Simon Hellberg 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Families Like Ours OTT Release Date: When and where to watch Amaryllis August & Albert R. Lindhardt's series
Families Like Ours OTT Release Date: This Danish drama miniseries is scheduled to premiere on Netflix on June 10, 2025, as per What's on Netflix. The series comprises seven episodes, each with a runtime of approximately 49–50 minutes. Originally aired on Denmark's TV 2 from October 20 to December 1, 2024, Families Like Ours is now making its global streaming debut on Netflix. What is Families Like Ours all about? Set in a near-future Denmark facing a national evacuation due to rising sea levels, Families Like Ours follows high school student Laura as she navigates complex choices involving her divorced parents and her boyfriend, Elias. The series explores themes of displacement, identity, and resilience, mirroring real-world challenges posed by climate change. Meet the cast and crew of Families Like Ours Directed and co-written by Oscar-winner Thomas Vinterberg, known for Another Round, the series also features music by Valentin Hadjadj and cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen. Families Like Ours features a stellar Danish cast including Amaryllis August, Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Helene Reingaard Neumann, Esben Smed, Magnus Millang, Thomas Bo Larsen, David Dencik, Max Kaysen Høyrup and Asta Kamma August among others. Families Like Ours has garnered critical acclaim with a 100% average Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and 5 out of 6 stars, calling it "the most riveting social story in years' on Filmmagasinet Ekko. As per the Loud and Clear Reviews, 5 stars described it as "a marvel of a series that brims with humanity." However, some critics, like The Guardian, have noted that while the series tackles significant themes, it may feel emotionally distant at times. Do you think Families Like Ours will find its due on OTT? Drop your thoughts @Indiatimes.
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Want to know how the world really ends? Look to TV show Families Like Ours
The climate crisis has taken a new and frightening turn, and in the expectation of disastrous flooding, the entire landmass of Denmark is about to be evacuated. Effectively, the country will be shutting itself down and sending its 6 million people abroad, where they will have to cope as best they can. Huge numbers of northern Europeans are therefore being turned into refugees: a few might have the wealth and connections to ease their passage from one life to another, but most are about to face the kind of precarious, nightmarish future they always thought of as other people's burden. Don't panic: this is not a news story – or not yet, anyway. It's the premise of an addictive new drama series titled Families Like Ours, acquired by the BBC and available on iPlayer. I have seen two episodes so far, and been struck by the very incisive way it satirises European attitudes to the politics of asylum. But what has also hit me is its portrayal of something just as modern: how it shows disaster unfolding in the midst of everyday life. At first, watching it brings on a sense of impatience. Why are most of the characters so calm? Where are the apocalyptic floods, wildfires and mass social breakdown? At times, it verges on boring. But then you realise the very clever conceit that defines every moment: it is really a story about how we all live, and what might happen tomorrow, or the day after. The writer and journalist Dorian Lynskey's brilliant book Everything Must Go is about the various ways that human beings have imagined the end of the world. 'Compared to nuclear war,' he writes, 'the climate emergency deprives popular storytellers of their usual toolkit. Global warming may move too fast for the planet but it is too slow for catastrophe fiction.' Even when the worst finally happens, most of us may respond with the kind of quiet mental contortions that are probably better suited to literature than the screen. Making that point, Lynskey quotes a character in Margaret Atwood's novel The Year of the Flood: 'Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.' These days, that kind of thinking reflects how people deal with just about every aspect of our ever-more troubled world: if we can avert our eyes from ecological breakdown, then everything else can be either underestimated or ignored. There is a kind of moment, I would wager, that now happens to all of us. We glance at our phones or switch on the radio and are assailed by the awful gravity of everything, and then somehow manage to instantly find our way back to calm and normality. This, of course, is how human beings have always managed to cope, as a matter of basic mental wiring. But in its 21st-century form, it also has very modern elements. Our news feeds reduce everything to white noise and trivia: the result is that developments that ought to be vivid and alarming become so dulled that they look unremarkable. Where this is leading politically is now as clear as day. In the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz wrote, in the wake of Trump's re-election, about how democracies slide into authoritarianism. 'In a Hollywood disaster movie,' he writes, 'when the big one arrives, the characters don't have to waste time debating whether it's happening. There is an abrupt, cataclysmic tremor, a deafening roar … In the real world, though, the cataclysm can come in on little cat feet. The tremors can be so muffled and distant that people continually adapt, explaining away the anomalies.' That is true of how we normalise the climate crisis; it also applies to the way that Trump and his fellow authoritarians have successfully normalised their politics. Marantz goes to Budapest, and meets a Hungarian academic, who marvels at the political feats pulled off by the country's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. 'Before it starts, you say to yourself: 'I will leave this country immediately if they ever do this or that horrible thing,'' he says. 'And then they do that thing, and you stay. Things that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago, five years ago, you may not even notice.' The fact that populists are usually climate deniers is perfect: just as searingly hot summers become mundane, so do the increasingly ambitious plans of would-be dictators – particularly in the absence of jackboots, goose-stepping and so many other old-fashioned accoutrements. Put simply, Orbán/Trump politics is purposely designed to fit with its time – and to most of its supporters (and plenty of onlookers), it looks a lot less terrifying than it actually is. Much the same story is starting to happen in the UK. On the night of last week's local elections, I found myself in the thoroughly ordinary environs of Grimsby town hall, watching the victory speech given by Reform UK's Andrea Jenkyns, who had just been elected as the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire. For some reason, she wore a spangly outfit that made her look as if she was on her way to a 1970s-themed fancy dress party, which raised a few mirthless laughs. She said it was time for an end to 'soft-touch Britain', and suddenly called for asylum seekers to be forced to live in tents. That is the kind of thing that only fascists used to say, but it now lands in our political discourse with not much more than a faint thump. Meanwhile, life has to go on. About 20 years ago, I went to an exhibition of works by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson – one of which was of a family of four adults picnicking by the Marne, with their food and wine scattered around them, and a rowing-boat moored to the riverbank. When I first looked at it, I wondered what its significance was. But then I saw the date on the adjacent plaque: '1936-38.' We break bread, get drunk and tune out the noise until carrying on like that ceases to be an option: as Families Like Ours suggests, that point may arrive sooner than we think. John Harris is a Guardian columnist
Telegraph
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Families Like Ours, review: this tale of a flooded Denmark will drag you into its slipstream
If you live in one of the ever-rising number of households designated as a flood risk then it might be handy to have a life jacket to hand when watching Families Like Ours (BBC Four). Because in this (let's hope not too) prescient drama, a whole country is going under. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who launched Mads Mikkelsen into the drink at the climax of his modern classic movie Another Round, is diving into deep water again here: he's asking us to ponder what would happen if a whole country has to be abandoned due to rising water levels. In Families Like Ours, Denmark is literally sunk. It's an ingenious, if chilling, set-up. As the news of the Danish Government's decision to abandon ship and launch a repatriation programme for its six million citizens seeps out, panic understandably sets in. The border floodgates open and we meet a handful of characters struggling to keep heads above water as the world turns its back on them: Denmark, pretty quickly, finds out who its friends are. But it's individual stories, not the bigger picture, that Vinterberg – who writes as well as directs – turns his focus on. The political issues thrown up by a country abandoning itself and creating its own diaspora are given short shrift in favour of examining the personal impact of what forging a new tribe of refugees entails. The heart of the story is 18-year-old Laura (Amaryllis April August), whose one key mystifying decision to derail her own future in order to support her struggling mother sends ripples across Europe as she lands everyone – from her dad and his new family, to her recently met love-of-her-life – into a tailspin. Now I'm not one to try and control the characters in TV dramas (until we get truly interactive, let's face it: it's a thankless task) but it takes a whole suspension bridge of disbelief to go with the flow of the wildly illogical choices each and every character makes here as their lives are summarily upended. Laura's not the only one with her finger on the self-destruct button. Henrik (Magnus Millang) is another character who will have you shouting at the screen in bafflement as he repeatedly sets about detonating his marriage to husband, government official Nikolaj (Esben Smed), thanks to his outsized victim mentality. But shouting at the screen means that, for all their inexplicable actions, these characters have a way of getting under your skin. Put yourself in their place: what would you do if you found yourself washed up on the margins of a world where any potential lifelines come swathed in choking red tape? It's a tough question because no one comes out too well in Vinterberg's scenario. The undercurrent coursing through Families Like Ours is a sour take on humanity, a recourse to base survival instincts only occasionally sweetened by random acts of kindness. Fascinating and infuriating in equal measure and ultimately oddly moving, for all its flaws, Families Like Ours pulls you into its emotional slipstream and won't let go.
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Families Like Ours review – why is this dull drama such a hit in Denmark?
Families Like Ours is a drama – directed and co-written by the Oscar-winning Danish director Thomas Vinterberg – that asks the question: what would you do if your luck ran out? The kind that maybe saw you born with a healthy body, or into a privileged, developed country, or with a skin colour that didn't invite discrimination among others. Maybe even all of the above. What if life as you knew it – stable, easy, dependable, cushioned – was turned upside down? What then? The seven-part series is set in Denmark in a near future in which the Dutch economy has recently crashed, flooding the Netherlands' nearby countries with job-seeking immigrants, eating up capacity and goodwill. Thus there is little of either available when the government announces that the threat posed to low-lying Denmark by global heating and rising sea levels means it must now be evacuated of its six million inhabitants entirely. The country is, in effect, being shut down. So Vinterberg takes what most of us treat as an existential threat, a problem too huge and frightening to think about, and puts it into a more manageable frame. Rendering it smaller and more potent still, we follow a handful of characters through the decisions they are forced to make as the massive displacement begins. Some have advance notice of the government's announcement and use it – illegally, but who wouldn't, is the first question we are made to ask ourselves – to liquidise assets before the market crashes and withdraw savings in cash before restrictions are brought in. Among them is Nikolaj (Esben Smed), a government employee, who tells his husband, Henrik, (Magnus Millang), and his sister Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumann). Henrik's volatile, homophobic brother Peter (David Dencik) is tipped off too and it is from him that come most of the violent incidents that Vinterberg's naturalistic approach otherwise eschews. Sometimes, you wonder if it eschews them too much. There are reports of social unrest but there is so little on screen that you do wonder if the drama could not afford to ratchet up the tension a bit more. There is so much talk about the necessary documents to be found, visas to be applied for, permits to be amassed and so many scenes set across desks from cold-hearted bureaucrats that you could get to the end of the first few episodes feeling that you have a better idea of how to organise a nationwide exodus than of how it would really feel to be caught up in one. The other characters we follow include Amalie's husband, Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), an architect who manages to use his connections to get his family a coveted pathway to France. But his daughter Laura (Amaryllis August), from his first marriage, is torn between going with him (to take up her place at the Sorbonne or going with her less wealthy and connected mother, Fanny (Paprika Steen), to her state-organised placement in Romania (it is possible Vinterberg has chosen to make some of his soon-to-be-refugees a little too privileged). There is also new boyfriend, Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt), to throw into the mix and provide a 'will first love be torn asunder' subplot that is given too much time for what it adds to the show. More affecting is the decision made by Christel (Asta Kamma August), mother of nine-year-old footballing talent Lucas who has been offered a place by football scouts in England but would have to go without her. As borders close and travel by resettled Danes will become impossible, she would essentially be saying goodbye to him for ever. Families Like Ours has been a hit with viewers and critics since its inaugural showing at the Venice film festival last year. And there is much to admire. It doesn't preach, it does have the themes work through the characters instead of the other way round (and has a cast stuffed with Danish heavyweights to help it). But it all feels a bit thin, a bit bloodless – like a thought experiment made flesh rather than a compelling, provocative drama. The script is uninspiring and the relentlessness of the bad decisions made by characters, as if to be privileged is not just to be unreflective but actively stupid, too, lends a slight air of flagellation to proceedings. One to admire, perhaps, but not to love – and therefore one whose message can, if you try, be resisted. Families Like Ours aired on BBC Four and is on iPlayer now.
