Statens Filmcentral

A drama-documentary film about the fatal effect of poor living conditions on health – the so-called "social inheritance." The principal characters in the film are two fourteen or fifteen-year-old children, Carl and Hanne. Covering a hundred-year period and drawing on case stories recorded by actual hospital staff, the film illustrates a number of variations of "the same old story."

It is time for the written examination. Everybody is waiting for the exact time to come where they can turn the paper and start the examination. All the tables are placed in lines in the assembly hall. Not a sound is being made and the atmosphere bears the marks of excitement, anticipation and nervousness.

In a culture where cremation is unusual, cemeteries fill up rapidly. In Latin America and in some other places, to solve the problem, remains are frequently exhumed. In Cuba, two year after interment. Relatives are invited to observe the little ritual. The music of the film is drawn from requiems from different periods. Twelve pieces by seven different composers are quoted. Together, they make up a traditional requiem, although only a few passages from the "dies irae" have been included, and other sections are slightly abbreviated.

12-year-old Martin finds the going tough. Manhood is approaching, but so far mostly as aches and pain. His mother's men friends are definitely nothing like the father he does not have. So some kind of male bonding is inevitable when he meets Funder, a juvenile droput on the run from the police. There is also girl-friend Rikke to consider. Who needs Martin the most? Coming of age isn't so easy.

The boy Kim moves with his family from the countryside to a ghetto in a big city. He does not do too well in school, and that makes him an easy victim for the hard core bullies in the new school. When the group leader is moved to a private school, Kim is accepted in the gang - as long as he provides cigarettes for the other members. This of course leads to a confrontation with the school teachers, his family and eventually the gang members.

The race against time ... Water, blooming life/suffocating death. Fighting back to life despite an irreversible loss is the greatest victory over death.

The intention of the film is to give an impression of what small exotic Denmark looks like, what the strange Danes look like and how they are. Nearly 100 Danes are presented in the film, amongst them a racing cyclist, a Minister of Finance, a popular actor and 13 unmarried women from a provincial town. "There is too much fogginess and rain and melancholy in most of the pictures of Denmark," says Jørgen Leth. "But not in my film. I would like to show you some authentic, clear and beautiful pictures from this strange country."