24-year-old Petri decides to live out a radical thought experiment. He is unhappy and feels weighed down by all the material goods that he has otherwise accumulated in his apartment. So he packs all his belonging and moves them into the basement, and starts living according to a modest, but strict, self-imposed rule: he can only retrieve one thing each day, and he is not allowed to buy anything new. The experiment is to last a whole year. And it starts with a stark-naked, young man in an ice-cold, empty apartment. Luukkainen eventually realises that, once he has looked after his basic needs, can do without most of his stuff without losing his quality of life and contentment. 'Your life does not consist of things. Things are just props,' says the wise grandmother and points out the film's basic tenet. But the question is, however, if by dropping out of consumer society he also drops out of all social life. Can you have friends without having a mobile phone? And will the rest of the world even accept such a project? A brave film, which goes for the jugular of the expansive consumerism of the 2000s with a fine (Finnish) mixture of seriousness and humour. At the same time, it is also a story of the youthful quest for happiness, love and a way forward in life – and, finally, it's just incredible that he actually pulled through with it.
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