Seventeen-year-old Modris lives in a grey microdistrict. Despite having a pretty girlfriend he‘s apathetic, generally unenthusiastic about school and always at loggerheads with his single, weary mother. Time and again he steals minor sums of money in order to feed his gambling addiction. When, in the middle of winter, he cashes in on his mother‘s radiator with a Russian pawnbroker, it proves the final straw: she presses charges against him for theft. Modris is given a two-year suspended sentence. From then on he has probation conditions to stick to, one of which is a ban on the accrual of further debts: The alternative, should he commit three further minor offences, is prison. The youngster refuses to change however, as he continues to quarrel with his mother and neglect his girlfriend. In fact it‘s only his absent father who seems to awaken his curiosity.