November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.
Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?
The film is based on a 2003 novel by the same name, written by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder. The main character is the young boy Georg who one day finds a long letter from his deceased father. The letter tells, among other things, about the father's youthful love for the mysterious "orange girl" (appelsinpiken), and leaves a mystery for Georg to solve.
