Is Families Like Ours Based on a True Story?

Originally titled ‘Familier Som Vores,’ Netflix’s ‘Families Like Ours’ tells the story of Laura and her family, whose lives are turned upside down when rising sea levels in Denmark force the country’s occupants to move out. As they seek refuge in nearby neighboring nations, they quickly find themselves pulled in a variety of different directions, compelling them to work as a tight-knit group as they navigate the challenges in their path. However, matters become complicated when Laura is forced to choose between moving in with her father, Jacob, in France or accompanying her struggling mother, Fanny, to another part of Europe. Created by Thomas Vinterberg, the sci-fi drama series explores the heavy consequences of climate change and the realities faced by fleeing families from ecological disasters.

Families Like Ours is a Thought Experiment on a Refugee Crisis in a European Nation

While the dystopian reality of ‘Families Like Ours’ may be largely fictional, writers Thomas Vinterberg and Bo Hr. Hansen channeled a lot of real-world fears and anxieties into the project, thereby adding a layer of grounded elements that hit eerily close to home. According to Vinterberg, the show’s primary inspiration came to him around 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown and the war in Ukraine. During this period, the creator was deeply affected by the influx of Syrian refugees into Denmark, people who had lost their homes, and their sense of identity in the process of displacement. While introspecting on their tragic plight, he started imagining how human beings from the Western world might react if they turned into refugees overnight, planting the first seeds for the project.

Even if the thought experiment was a significant part of setting the stage for what was to come, Vinterberg stated that the concrete foundations for the series were only laid down after he experienced living in Paris, France, for a while because of his work. He said, “I’d been living there (Paris) for a year, a year and a half, and I felt super unwelcome. I’d go to the same cafe every day and they still treated me incredibly rude, like a tourist. One Sunday, I just wanted to go home to my family, I was missing my daughters, and I became occupied with what it would be like if we were forced to be separated…” The creator cited John Crowley’s 2015 drama movie ‘Brooklyn’ as an inspiration for depicting the reality of immigration and how it can be devastating for the families involved. Thus, it formed the basic skeleton of the show’s premise, including its sci-fi aspects.

Families Like Ours Digs into Real-Life Concerns Over Climate Disaster

The world in ‘Families Like Ours’ resembles that of any modern, well-developed European country, specifically that of contemporary Denmark, making the dystopian nature of its narrative all the more chilling. For authenticity, Thomas Vinterberg stated that the creative team behind the show carried out extensive research to reasonably figure out how rising sea levels might affect a nation moving forward, particularly in a catastrophic scenario. While it may have been logical to conduct studies into the effect of climate change, the creator explained that it was more valuable to understand how the Foreign Ministry of Denmark would react if a disaster struck. Thus, much of the research was conducted around this specific notion, allowing them to understand whether the response would be to evacuate or to spend money on finding other solutions.

“We spoke to a lot of people, to try to imagine, how would this country, this little Shire that I come from, react?” Vinterberg said. “And we decided we would react early, ahead of the water flooding the country. We would try and care for all our citizens instead of spending a lot of money trying to save parts of the country, we would try to rescue as many as possible in the best possible way.” Outside the evacuation pathway, questions were also raised about the validity of building dams and better drainage systems to help with the flooding situation. However, despite their seeming feasibility in certain cases, the creator explained that even experts in the field are not entirely sure about how things would work out precisely in the event of a disaster simply because the parameters are too vast to calculate without things actually going wrong in the first place.

Family Drama Lies at the Center of Families Like Ours

Although immigration and rampant climate change might be the instigating factor in ‘Families Like Ours,’ its main attention lies in dissecting the complex family dynamics that govern an individual’s life, even though larger forces could be at play around them. To that end, the show feels incredibly intimate and personal despite having grander themes at its heart. Thomas Vinterberg described the show as primarily being about “human beings, with these singular persons, who all react differently.” While there are lots of scarily realistic elements scattered around the narrative, including the prospect of a nationwide ecological disaster, the story tries to curtail the fear of these terrifying circumstances through an exploration of “resilience and love, and people who cross continents for love.”

As the family angle plays such a huge role in the show, it can often influence every other aspect of the series. In that sense, ‘Families Like Ours’ bears a resemblance to Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia,’ a film that offers a surrealistic meditation about love and individual expression in the wake of a world-ending scenario. Vinterberg said that he may have “gotten some inspiration from there. I just don’t think this [scenario] is the end of the world.” Overall, the Netflix show captures the human condition in both its frailties and strengths, showcasing how people are capable of seemingly contradictory actions, such as cruelty and kindness. When things go awry, people tend to recede into their shells and look after their own, a characteristic that the show’s inhabitants know all too well. But they are also ready to be kind and generous, illustrating our duality succinctly.