The distinguished and elderly professor Isak Borg is awarded, for his long career as a doctor, a prestigious academic award, which he will have to pick up at the Cathedral of Lund. During the night before the trip, however, the man is disturbed by a nightmare: in an unknown and desolate district of the city, where the clocks are devoid of hands, a hearse slams against a street lamp. From the inside of the coffin a hand grabs him and he sees his own face in the face of the corpse. The following morning, the professor decides not to leave by plane but from Stockholm by car and to accompany him will be the daughter-in-law Marianne. The speeches that the woman will make to her father-in-law, the stay in the house where he spent his childhood, the visions and dreams that visit him, along with the meetings that the two will do along the way, will transform into the existential balance of the elderly man . He will finally be able to see his affective and emotional shortages, to be able to reconcile with his own affections and his past, before taking his leave serenely.