25-year-old Iiris and Karoliina have been best friends since childhood. Karoliina has been travelling and living abroad for some years now, but is coming back home for the summer as Karoliina has gotten them a job as waitresses in Hanko, the best summer city in Finland!
Jed (19) walks out on his former life, without destination, without explanation, and gets on a train. He ends up by happenstance in a small eastern town in Finland where he soon comes face to face with the daily rigors of independent life. Coping becomes a challenge for him almost to the point of being an obsession. Of all the people in town, Jed seems to constantly run across the prickly and quick-witted Lulu (17). Gradually, without either of them admitting it, their relationship changes from bickering, picking on each other and a battle of wills to friendship, and as can happen, finally to love.
In the closed community of a reform school for teenagers, the principal's daughter is found sexually molested. The schoolgirls seem to know more than they are willing to tell.
In the spring of 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes in the Soviet Union and a girl named Mimi arrives in a small village in the Tavastia region of the Southern Finland, filling 15-year-old Mariia's life with light for a moment. After twenty years, facing a dead end in her own life, a grown-up Mariia visits her childhood home and recalls the summer of her youth and the tragic autumn that followed. In a flood of memories, Mariia is forced to confront her past. Returning to the summer of her first love in the 80's, Mariia must let go of the guilt that swallows up all the light and forgive other people as well as herself.
