Young teenager Bo is too sensitive for the hothouse atmosphere of a boarding school run by a cold, unfeeling would-be man of the cloth. Lonely and scared, he finds a soulmate in the headmaster's son Kim with whom he forms a bond of friendship... that slowly grows into something more.
Hidden among the dunes on the west coast of Jutland lies HU, where fishermen struggle to earn a living. The hard and dangerous work combines HU's small population with a peculiar madness that gives free rein to emotions and intensity in all aspects of life. One day, three Copenhageners arrive in the windswept village and are both astonished and fascinated by the local free spirit.
Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", "Riget" means "the realm" or "the kingdom" and leads one to think of "dødsriget", the realm of the dead.