"It's simple! We do as we're told." This disconcerting reply comes from a Swedish employment office employee when asked how the country’s most unpopular government agency works. And that’s not all: in this creative documentary, case workers, receptionists and psychologists reveal how the Swedish employment system is failing. They complain about inadequate software and mystifying error messages, excessive caseloads and demoralizing results—on average, each case worker helps just 10 people find work each year, and only one in 10 clients will find a new job. To assure the anonymity of the interviewees, they're all represented by cardboard puppets. Thanks to visible puppeteers, expressive eyes and recognizable gestures, these puppets quickly take on the appearance of real people. The result is a fascinating, comical and artistic study of human strategies to get along in an irrational bureaucracy.
A young woman is found dead in Ystad. When the police begin the case, they are told that the woman came from Moldova and that she worked as a prostitute in Sweden. Kurt, who leads the case, decides to seek out the woman's family in Moldova. When he returns to Sweden, he is involved in a car accident and takes a leave of absence from work. Around the same time, Kurt finds where his forgetfulness comes from.
