Growing up in Stockholm in the 1920s, 10-year-old Roland (Jesper Salén) is regularly bullied and taunted by his peers for having a Jewish mother (Basia Frydman) and a socialist father (Stellan Skarsgard). In spite of the verbal and physical abuse he endures, Roland manages to extract some revenge -- and learn a few life lessons in the bargain -- when he adapts some of the illegal condoms his mother sells in her tobacco store in order to create homemade slingshots.