Two guys in their early twenties, a hitchhiking Dutch student and a Swedish police officer with a broken police car, meet each other on a Swedish country road. On their way to the gas station, their suspicious understanding gradually changes.

The Duch painter Vincent Van Gogh grew up in the family of a stern Calvinist country pastor, feeling a misunderstood misfit, obsessed by painting, while his elder brother Theo left for Brussels, later Paris, and became an art dealer. Vincent tried an alternative career as missionary to the Catlolic Walloon mineworkers in the Ardennes but returns, broke and failed again. Later he'll move in with Theo in Paris, but can't fit in business or society. Vincent heads for frustration and health drama. His heir, a Dutch railway engineer, later visits those places while deciding whether to sell the family paintings collection to invest in the super-fast railroad.

Desperately trying to come to terms with his sexuality, gay teenager Ruben finds his path to sexual acceptance complicated, as homophobic bullying brings him ever closer to the brink of suicide.

Gerrit de Veer, a novice writer on a 16th-century Dutch merchant vessel, chronicles the daring mission to discover a trade route across the North Pole to Asia. But the heroic journey turns into tragedy when the ship gets stuck in the relentless, penetrating ice. The men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears, hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero.