Middle-aged couple Rolf and Eva live in a passionless relationship. They wear and tear at each other and Eva begins to feel sexually frustrated. One night she tries to seduce Rolf. He dismisses her but then something happens that will change their relationship forever. (Plot Summary from Swedish Film Database)

Following a prologue set in war-torn former Yugoslavia, the film follows several different Christmas celebrations in the small Norwegian town of Skogli. Paul is a thirty-three-year-old laborer who marches into his doctor's office demanding a prescription, then proceeds to lay bare all his woes. The doctor is beleaguered by his own marital and financial difficulties (he's left his upset wife to work emergency calls on Christmas Eve). There's also an elderly man preparing an esoteric ritual, a vagrant who runs into an old flame, a middle-aged couple in the throes of passion, a boy hopelessly in love with his Muslim neighbor and a young émigré couple whose car breaks down as the woman goes into labor.

A gang of crooks robbing cash collectors, run into a police surveillance team and the inadequate police response results in a gunfight. A TV crew on assignment in the area happens to capture this humiliation on camera, and this example of police incompetence is soon the lead story in every news bulletin. Public confidence in law and order now suffers irreparable harm. The head of the Moscow force welcomes a public search-and-destroy operation against these thugs, the brainchild of Katya, his PR director. She proposes that the capture of this dangerous gang be transformed into a live TV show of a kind never seen before. At this point she cannot know that the gang leader's life-and-death struggle with the police is destined to lead to a media duel. Besieged in a huge apartment block, the crooks hold hostage a father and his son and daughter. A massive special forces rescue operation is mounted but fails miserably. Undaunted by this setback, Katya and her team of specialists manipulate ...

Tuula's husband Jukka takes care of all domestic chores. Tuula seems to have no idea that her husband spends his evenings working as a major league ice hockey referee. She also finds out about his extra-marital affair with a female rally driver. In revenge, Tuula starts seeing her gynecologist Timo Paasi, a married man with six children.

Set in beautiful 14th century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of wealthy land-owning parents whose daughter, a young virgin, is brutally raped and murdered by goat herders after her half sister has invoked a pagan curse. By a bizarre twist of fate, the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl's parents, who, discovering the truth about their erstwhile lodgers, exact a chilling revenge.