After 15 years of marriage, David and Marianne have grown apart. David has had an affair with a patient of his and Marianne has got herself involved with her former lover Carl-Adam, who's also David's best friend. When she travels to Copenhagen to meet Carl-Adam, David takes the same train as she...
Marine Bo Fredriksson is travelling home on a leave. He reminisce about an accident he caused as a 12-year old which killed a young girl, an event that has made him feel revulsion for death. Back home he meets Eva, a girl he fancies and they move together to Stockholm to start a life together.
Rönneberga is an old family manor. When Lennart Heijken is born, his proud father buys his newborn a grandfather's clock that will follow him through his life and see him become a student, an officer, a married man, and eventually an old man.
While Bertil Lindström works at the Swedish embassy in Paris, his wife Gabrielle spends the summer alone in Sweden. After a phone call to her, he starts to think of all the things she can possibly be doing separated from him.
The Farmer Germund is planning a wedding between his daughter Marit and Mats, the son of a neighboring farm. Everything seems to be going according to plan until Marit meets the fiddler Jon, an illegitimate son who enchants the youth with his violin.
Gertrud is being abandoned by her husband after 20 years of marriage. Offended and unhappy she leaves her home and rents a room. The landlady's son is drawn to her and tries to help her out of the loneliness.
Rakel, Marta, Karin and Annette are married to four brothers. While waiting in a summer cottage for their husbands to come home, they tell each other stories about their marriages. Rakel tells about the time she had an affair and confronted her husband with it. Marta's story is about how she at...
Early 1940s, during WW2, pitch black waters except for a moon-shadow over the waves. Surrounded by minefields and the fog slips in the sweeping headlights of the cargo ship S/S Rune. But the ship bows relentlessly forward through the night.
The soul of an evil witch about to be burned is transferred to the child of a pregnant woman in the audience. 19 years later a timid girl arrives at a farm looking for work. The farmer employs her despite his wife's protests. Soon it stands clear that the girl is in fact the evil witch, returned to...
Olof Koskela, the only son is driven from home when he wants to marry the wrong girl. He takes a job as a floater. His reputation as a womanizer goes far and wide. When he meets the proud Kyllikki, he enters into a bet to defeat the mighty rapids standing on a log.
Celebrated elderly Austrian poet opposes nazism, while his daughter admires and falls in love with leading nazi activist, who eventually becomes concentration camp commander with his father-in-law as prisoner.
The farm workers at Näs Farm, lead by Hellman, go on strike, demanding that their employer recognize their labor union. But he calls on strike-breakers to perform the farm work. Hellman's son Gunnar is a hothead who easily gets in trouble.
"Strange Harbor " - A Swedish cargo ship is in the winter of 1938 at the dock in Gdynia in Poland, waiting to depart with coal to Sweden. In a tavern in the port a Polish dockworkers tries to tell something to the Swedish sailors, but is rudely turned away by the tavern owner. Later in the evening...
