Christmas is-a-jingling to Lapland in 1984. Niina, a single mother, is fired from her job in a bakery and drifts into the middle of an international missile crisis in Inari when the Soviet Union shoots a missile across the Finnish border.
Raimo’s comfortable, middle-class bubble is burst when a Satan-worshipping sex cult moves in next door.
A teenage orphan girl Salome lives within a sect lead by charismatic and ruthless Maria Åkerblom. During a pivotal summer, Salome is faced with standing up against Maria, the woman who had saved her.
Liina lives together with her mother. Her mother is often working night shifts so Liina needs to get by alone. In the same building is an apartment where a man died some time ago. One morning Liina hears a dog barking inside the apartment. Liina makes up a story about the dog and tells it to everyone the following day. A nightly rendezvous in the dead man’s apartment turns Liina’s stories true.
Cosmetics saleswoman Kirsi Viilonen dreams of a career as a star artist. When Kirsi meets DJ and radio journalist Paula, she decides to give in completely to her dream of becoming a singer. Despite the scorn of the male-dominated music world, Paula recognizes the star in Kirsi and together they get her a recording contract. Kikka's career takes off when her nipple is accidentally flashed on a TV show. Kikka immediately becomes a national celebrity and one of Finland's best-selling female artists.
Marjaleena, Miss Finland's 2nd princess from decades ago, runs a bar on the Spanish sunny coast with her son Vili and her retired sidekick Mikko. Their carefree lives are cut short when the trio learns that Marjaleena's ex-husband Mato is about to be released from prison after a long sentence. Mato plans to retire to the sunshine coast to enjoy the spoils of robbery with his new lover and drive Marjaleena, Mikko and Vili out of their bar. But that's no good for the betrayed trio, who want their share of the millions.
A single mother struggles to connect with her adopted son, who she believes is gay. Her assumptions about her son's needs and desires lead to a cascading series of calamities.
The film is about a show dancer, Kristal, 40+ years, blond hair woman, who with a Lada car goes around small pubs and entertains people. First she seems a bit ridiculous, self-sufficient and naive, a potential victim, an circus animal, but she comes out as something else. Kristal is a weird saint, who takes to bear all the hate, despair, lust and confusion around her and through that gives people a momentary relief.
Matara is the story of boys who role-play their own kingdoms in the summer. The senators plot in a togas made of bed sheets and take puppets as wives, while the coal-moustached rascals go wild with the city's and circus fun. A stroke from a wooden sword means death, and once you die, there's no coming back. Other Nations are treated as they usually are, ruthlessly.
A couple’s dream of a perfect child spirals into a nightmare as soon as the baby is born. The mother Saga thinks there’s something seriously wrong with the child, who drains her of all energy and sucks blood from her breasts. While their marriage strains, Saga’s husband Jon tries to pretend he doesn’t see the problems, and Saga lets herself start hating the monster she gave birth to. Maybe the only way out is to become a monster herself.
Karo and Risto have been nursing their strained marriage on holiday in Lapland. On their way back, they get into a car accident and are forced to stay at the only accommodation in the area to recover. In a frozen environment, Karo begins to doubt her own memory and does everything she can to get home from the snow-covered holiday village. Risto, on the other hand, begins to feel strangely comfortable at the luxury resort and refuses to leave.
A mother of a family abandons her terminally ill husband and finds a new family from a sex cult that is preparing to commit a mass suicide.
