This film is about the painter Sveinn Björnsson (1925-1997), and his struggles to perfect his art. Following a wide-ranging exhibition at the Kjarvalsstaðir Art Gallery in 1989, he has become tired of the fantasy style which he had been developing for thirty years. What needed to happen in order for him to create something new? What sacrifices would it involve? This film is about that struggle experienced by creative artists. The film is not a biography, or a learned review of the painter's style, but it does show a side of the man which very few see. One evening, he feels he is not alone in his studio; it feels as if some being is there who wants to help him.

Centers on Georg Bjarnfreðarson, an over-educated know-it-all who has just been released from jail after a ten year sentence for manslaughter, but is still a prisoner of his own past.

Vera is a young woman who has no memories of her mother. Her desperate search for a mother image merges with her own search of self as she inevitably makes an attempt to define the boundary between herself and a mother she never knew.