Roland (Salén) is the 12-year-old son of a Russian Jewish mother (Frydman) and a socialist father (Skarsgård), coming of age in 1920s Stockholm.
Due to his family's background he has become an outcast, a constant target of bullying by his peers, and often humiliated and physically punished by a sadistic schoolteacher (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) in front of classmates.
In retaliation against his tormentors, Roland steals condoms from his mother's tobacco shop inventory and turns them into crude slingshot weapons.
He also falls in love with a neighbourhood girl (Frida Hallgren) but as Roland attempts to toughen up and improve his troubled life, he also allies with the wrong group of friends and inadvertently makes himself a juvenile offender.
"[6] Conversely, the Washington Post had an unfavorable view of the movie and called the story "a catalogue of catastrophes that surely left the real protagonist with many emotional scars.