From an old self-help tape the spineless Lars follows guidance, which brings him to kidnap his estranged father.

Denmark, 2013. Police officers Carl Mørck and Hafez el-Assad, sole members of Department Q, which is focused on closing cold cases, investigate the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard, vanished when she and her brother were traveling aboard a ferry five years ago.

In the attempt to achieve the perfect Christmas, everything goes more and more wrong.

Mads moves into a house with his lovely girlfriend Marie when a sudden pang of doubt strikes him. Is this the meaning of life? Has he lived out all his dreams? He drops everything, moves away from his girlfriend and throws himself into a desperate quest to live out his greatest dreams; a quest to find the meaning of life and the one and only.

Overwhelmed and extra-sensitive, Katrine has a hard time coping when her more relaxed boyfriend, Andreas, takes a business trip just days after the birth of their first child. The fussy baby has difficulty breastfeeding, and vulnerable, insecure Katrine feels like a failure. When Katrine’s emotionally withholding mother Lise consents to stay for a few days, the two quickly fall into what are clearly familiar dysfunctional behavior patterns.

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

A college professor abandons his family and his career in order to champion his mistress, a student radical accused of killing a policeman.

A snapshot of the state of the Danish nation: in one of the stories, a woman enters a pole-sitting contest in a desperate bid to reinvent herself. Another is about Erik, whose wife has been lobbying a Better Homes and Gardens type magazine to do a spread on their perfect home. When the editors finally relent, she makes Erik sip his red wine in the laundry room lest he stain their cream-colored couches. Svend, the last remaining Marxist in Copenhagen, is the impassioned organizer of a political mass meeting where no one shows up. Finally, Jens, a pizza and porno connoisseur, connives his way to some booty by convincing Gry the model that he lives with his mentally challenged brother. Over the course of a week, their paths cross and nothing, and nobody, is ever quite the same again.

A man grows up in very modest circumstances in the early years of the 20th century, but his diligence, intelligence and willingness to endure hardship helps him to become a leading brain surgeon. A success story on the face of it, but a story about a man – who is none other than the director's father – a man of powerful emotions. The film explores the nature and origin of the guilt that repeatedly deprived him of happiness.