Feeling guilty after her lover's death, a woman tries to overcome her grief on a journey in Stockholm with her late partner's autistic brother.
After Emilie survives a suicide pact with her lover, Jackie, she is left with a crushing sense of survivor's guilt. She tries to overcome her grief by taking a journey with Jackie's autistic brother, Nils. In a parallel world, Archer, secretly in love with Emilie, sees her in a coma and desperately wants her to wake up. Three people. All looking for a way out of their trauma.
Emilie describes herself as a scriptwriter but she struggles to earn a living.
She and her lover Jackie attempted a suicide pact. Jackie died but Emilie did not, leaving her with a crushing sense of survivor's guilt.
A crested ibis, a kind of bird mainly found in Asia, flies over her home at the same time every day. Emilie dreams about turning into a bird. She starts to wonder if her life is a dream, and the ibis' life is the reality. Emilie builds a nest for the bird on her balcony.
Meanwhile, Jackie's autistic brother, Nils, wakes up after three years in a coma.Doctors contact Emilie and tell her that taking Nils on a trip would aid his rehabilitation. After he is discharged from the hospital, Emilie finds Nils barely talks. He just draws. One of his drawings is a crested ibis - even though such a bird has never been seen in Sweden.
Emilie and Nils go sightseeing around Stockholm. From island to island, they have fun, though they don't speak. After finding an advertisement for a virtual reality exhibition, Nils finally talks about his doubts regarding "what is real in the world". He also opens up about his alcoholic father who abused both him and Jackie.
Emilie decides to seek revenge. She is faced with a choice: to kill Jackie's abusive father, or to spare him.
As we follow the journey of Emilie from her own perspectives, we also unfold another version of the same journey from the point of view of the 'other half' of Emilie (the crested ibis), the point of view of the people surrounding Emilie, and, finally, the ultimate truth by a VR movie scriptwriter, Archer, who creates the story we have just been watching.
