Stig Dagerman

During his military service, a man meets a woman who works in the kitchen at the camp and they start a relationship. When the man is out on combat exercises, he becomes a witness to his Sergeant being paralyzed by a snake.

Åke lives under oppressive conditions. The father, a painter, spends his salary on drinking with his buddies.

The passengers are search their placements on the flight of life or death. Grotesque and wildly exaggerated flight attendants help out and give safety instructions. The publisher and his friend is already seated. A child rocks on a plastic stool. Suicide is painless. Perhaps even a relief. Fasten your seatbelts. Recording of the stage version.

Swedish writer Stig Dagerman (1923-1954) was a literary sensation who after a few productive years, suddenly fell silent. Struggling with writer's block, Dagerman wrote the essay "Our Need for Consolation" about his inner demons and his quest for freedom. For the first time in English, featuring Stellan Skarsgard as an on-camera narrator, this film brings Dagerman's powerful words to life in the form of a visual poem.

In a Swedish village, situated in a rural idyll, a father, mother and little daughter are preparing breakfast on a Sunday morning. The family is looking forward to the boat trip that is to follow. The little girl's thoughts are already completely on the water. But there is no sugar in the house, so the mother sends her little daughter to the neighbor across the street to quickly get some. Two villages further on, a young man is filling up his car with gas so that he can drive to the Baltic Sea with his girlfriend. In their convertible, the young people feel blithe and free on the country road and race towards the village where the little girl is just crossing the street with the sugar to return home.

About the foolish and lost Gabriel who lives entirely in the shadow of his brother, the brave soldier Mart who died in the war and is continuously immortalized by the dominant mother.

Mother, father and child in the kitchen. They've run out of sugar and the child is sent over to grandma to get some. The child takes its every day route down the garden, over the fence, it crosses the street, gets the sugar and...

A wealthy butcher, fond of liquor and women is about to marry a much younger woman. The woman's father has locked himself in the attic and refuses to come to the wedding.