During summer 1979, Ester moves to Alta in Northern Norway to begin teaching at an elementary school. Like many Sámi at the time, she is ashamed of her heritage and conceals her ethnicity. Ester goes to great lengths to fit in, even joining in with the derogatory jokes. When her cousin Mikkhal takes her to a camp by the Alta River, where people are demonstrating against the building of a dam, Ester learns how the fight for the river is also a revolt against the years of brutal racism and discrimination against her people. After a major confrontation with the police, Mikkhal and some other Sámi decide to go to Oslo to hunger strike in front of the Parliament. Knowing what is at stake, Ester realises it is time to make a stand…

A mother reports her student daughter Lisa missing, but detective Aslak Eira is getting too little information, and she is found in a lake. The more they investigate, the less they seem to understand. Then Lisa's best friend goes missing too.

Elvira, a confident Sámi teenager, firmly believes that her lesbian single mother conceived her at a Danish fertility clinic. She often daydreams about her father, envisioning him as a charismatic movie star. However, her world is turned upside down when her real biological father unexpectedly steps into her life.