A film group is making movie in the little town. Writer Pentti Töysä interrupts film group's press conference and claims that script is written by him and it is based on true story. Töysä also says that he has written a new ending to the movie and that it reveals an old murder. Not everyone is happy about the new twist.
Detective Karisto releases Auno 'Räpsy' Pirilä from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.
Two young lovers, Anna and Martti, are split apart but are reunited many years later when their lives have changed considerably. Anna is a war widow; Martti a writer, is married, and has five children.
After his plane crashes in Siberia, a Russian dancer, who defected to the West, is held prisoner in the Soviet Union. The KGB keeps him under watch and tries to convince him to become a dancer for the Kirov Academy of Ballet again. Determined to escape, he befriends a black American expatriate and his pregnant Russian wife, who agree to help him escape to the American Embassy.
Young priest returns from America to work in an old Helsinki neighbourhood with idyllic wooden houses. The shy but handsome bachelor is assigned the duty of marriage counseling but is soon overwhelmed by the ladies' romantic interest directed at himself. Trying to please everybody, he also creates confusion by taking both sides in the issue of whether to preserve the neighbourhood or to go along with the modernisation plans offered by property developers.