That includes scenes of giant crowds boarding ferries, protest and desperation as six million Danes grow to be local weather refugees and life as they understand it quickly collapses, the brand new TV sequence by the Oscar-winning director Thomas Vinterberg is a possible “look into the long run”, he says.
Familier som vores (Households Like Ours) – a drama which depicts a flooded Denmark shut down and evacuated – has been seen almost 1m occasions and grow to be a nationwide speaking level. At its premiere on the Venice worldwide movie competition, it evoked tears, shouts and a standing ovation, with one critic describing it as “grimly prophetic”.
Vinterberg, who co-founded the Dogme 95 movie motion and whose movie Druk (One other Spherical) received the Academy Award for finest worldwide characteristic in 2020, wrote in his director’s assertion that the drama – a part of the cli-fi, or local weather fiction, style that units tales within the impacts of the local weather disaster and world heating – “imagines a scenario the place we, as residents of a civilised and rich a part of the world, are pressured to go away our nation, our mates, kin, and all the things we maintain expensive”.
However amongst local weather scientists and consultants, the present has divided opinions. Some have praised it for bringing the local weather disaster to life by depicting white privileged Danes as local weather refugees. Others have criticised the present for depicting a situation that they declare couldn’t scientifically occur and for specializing in the private drama and ignoring a few of the structural inequalities inside Danish society, which is thought for its harsh asylum seeker insurance policies and hardline attitudes to immigrant integration.
Kirsten Halsnæs, a professor of local weather and economics at Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU) who has performed a key position within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) since 1993, mentioned: “Everyone knows that this couldn’t occur. The ocean degree rise must be so excessive that it might by no means occur for 3 or 4 centuries. So it isn’t a lot a local weather change story, it’s quite about what might occur if Danish folks turned refugees.”
However Lauren Bowey, a campaigner for Greenpeace Denmark, disagrees. “The tempo is maybe dramatised, however the risk is certainly actual,” she mentioned. “All of us need to really feel secure in our houses however in Denmark we’re threatened by water from each route – from the groundwater, from the over 8,500km of shoreline and from the rising rainfall.”
An enormous storm surge in October 2023 that resulted in additional than 3,300 harm claims and costing greater than 1bn DKK (£111m) in compensation demonstrates how a lot destruction flooding is already inflicting in Denmark, she mentioned.
The Danish Meteorological Institute has estimated that such climate occasions, which statistically happen each 100 years, might grow to be third yearly occasions by the tip of the century at an annual price of 43bn DKK (£4.77bn) in flood damages. Globally, greater than 20 million folks had been displaced from their houses final 12 months because of the local weather disaster.
“Fortunately, Households Like Ours is a piece of fiction,” she mentioned. “In actuality, we are able to nonetheless act to cease the implications of the local weather disaster earlier than it’s too late.”
Jakob Dreyer, a local weather and safety skilled on the College of Copenhagen, mentioned he was “blown away” by the primary two or three episodes of the seven-part sequence. Whereas he mentioned it was unlikely the entire of Denmark could be evacuated in a single go, the premise of the present was not “far-fetched”.
He mentioned: “Folks admire that it’s fiction, it’s a drama. After all it’s not lifelike that an entire nation could be evacuated without delay. What’s vulnerable to occurring in Denmark is primarily storm floods that make elements of the nation extra uninhabitable.” However, he added: “Some nations are at excessive threat from local weather change. The concept isn’t far-fetched. Some nations and teams need to cope with it already.”
In his analysis he has discovered that Danes are considerably extra keen to assist Ukrainian refugees than local weather refugees. On this context, placing essentially the most privileged on the centre of the drama – the place center class Danes turned refugees – labored successfully. It did, nevertheless, imply that the impression on essentially the most weak teams, who in actuality would undergo most, was not within the highlight, he added.
Charlotte Slente, the secretary-general of the Danish Refugee Council, mentioned the present could be academic for viewers and encourage empathy by serving to individuals who haven’t skilled being a refugee to “higher determine with the challenges and selections persons are pressured to make”.
“It additionally reveals the chaos of all of it – how tough it’s to make well-informed selections,” she added. “Everyone turns into depending on the mercy of others.”
Mette Nelund, the pinnacle of drama at TV2 Denmark, mentioned: “Households Like Ours is amongst our most watched drama sequence, however simply as importantly the sequence has helped to create essential conversations among the many Danes – each the massive, broad conversations and the shut ones.”
She added: “We’re very proud and comfortable that the Danes have welcomed the sequence and all of the reflections it brings.”
