A wife questions her life choices as she travels to Stockholm with her husband, where he is slated to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

They are people who have important significance for each other, but are not honest with each other. They live in a shadow world of lies and half truths and just waiting for the truth to come forward so they can continue their lives in a new direction.

In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially, slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the farmers. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes, Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.