A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.

The narrative portrays a plain man who guides the viewer through his life in a bleakly stylised world.

As the AIDS epidemic was spreading in 1987, the Swedish government commissioned Roy Andersson to make an educational film about the disease. In these twenty or so monotone scenes, Andersson criticizes the medical community for its dehumanizing and racist tendencies when researching HIV and AIDS.