The prestigious Danish filmmaker Bille August, winner of an Academy Award and two Palme d'Or in Cannes, returns with a highly personal drama. Three generations of a family gather over a weekend. The sisters Sanne and Heidi have accepted their terminally-ill mother’s desire to die before her disease worsens; but, as the weekend progresses, their mother's decision becomes harder and harder to deal with, and old conflicts come to the surface.

In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.