An adolescent boy feels betrayed by his friends and family when plans are made to drain his beloved marshlands and build a factory.

Adolescent Tom Vieren lives with his parents and sister in a small Dutch village. His various adolescent discontents find a focus in his opposition to a land reclamation scheme, which would turn some of his beloved marshlands into the site for a new factory. Both Tom's father and Tom's hunting partner since childhood, Bas Bovenlander, have no choice but to surrender to the drainage scheme - thereby, in his eyes, betraying themselves and becoming dupes. The pressures on the youth are intensified when his sister Lilly (with whom he is unusually close) develops a friendship with the industrialist who plans to build the factory. Then Tom's beloved grandfather dies, and the final shreds of meaning seem to go out of Tom's life.—5th Hong Kong International Film Festival