While the village magistrate casts an increasingly critical eye on the town’s midwives and healers, 16-year-old Anna falls in love with married fisherman Elias. The two begin an affair. When the magistrate’s mother falls ill, he joins forces with the local priest and starts interrogations. Anna exploits the opportunity and denounces the wife of her beloved. The consequences are gruesome. More and more women are sent to the gallows. Anna’s plot is nothing more than another excuse for those in power to give free rein to their hate of everything they don’t like. Saara Cantell’s unsparing portrait of village life before the modern era shows how violence spreads like the plague and draws in more and more people. The film keeps the tension rising right up to the denouement.