Anchored throughout his life to the snowbound, sleepy Canadian city of Winnipeg, Maddin travels headlong into his past to forge a new path to freedom. Drawn by the bittersweet pull of family, he returns to his unconventional childhood home – a split-level apartment cum beauty parlor – and moves right back in. Recruiting actors to spar with his "real" mother (played by '40s noir legend Ann Savage) atop the actual floorboards of his memory, he re-creates hilariously awkward moments from his adolescence. Spiraling out to the surrounding city and its peculiar locations and history, he re-imagines a notorious semi-nude civic pride event, a jazz-age séance ballet, a macabre frozen horse photo op, and "If Day," when the whole town pretends that the Nazis have invaded. All the while Maddin travels deep into his own nostalgia, searching for an elusive way out of Winnipeg.