[6] The film was inspired by a 7 March 1969 mass shooting incident in Pihtipudas, Finland, in which a smallholder shot and killed four armed policemen who had come to calm him down after he drove his family out of the house in a drunken rage.

[9] A Central Finnish smallholder, Pasi, tries to work odd jobs to provide for his family under meager conditions, but also starts moonshining with his friend Reiska and lapses into alcoholism.

His family is also humiliated as he gets into a fight, skips a sermon which he disrupts by shooting a gun outside, and is confronted by police who start visiting his home frequently.

[2] Urho Kekkonen, the President of Finland at the time, also praised the film after watching it with Niskanen in a more than five-hour private screening.

[6][7] Tauno Pasanen [fi], the man who committed the real-life killings the film was based on, saw the movie in prison and commented on it: "This is so true that it makes me laugh and cry at times.