The original Swedish title is Svinalängorna, which means "The swine rows" and refers to the housing project where parts of the story are set.

[5] On Saint Lucia's day, the happy life of a young Swedish family is disturbed by an unexpected phone call.

Johan understands only up to a certain point the disturbance of his wife and, despite the many resistances, convinces her to leave with the two little girls to reach their unknown grandmother, hospitalized at 600 km away.

The parents, immigrants from Finland, were a poor but also close-knit couple until the alcohol had taken over, weighing not so much on little Leena, already very strong and mature despite her young age, as on her little brother Sakari.

Returning from the hospital, still upset, the woman first inexplicably yells at her daughters, then lashes out at her husband in an irrational impetus that is very similar to the many scenes of violence experienced by a spectator when she was a child.