Juloratoriet (1996) is a multi-generational Swedish drama sparked by a 1930s tragedy: matriarch Solveig is crushed to death by a runaway herd of cows before Christmas. Her widowed husband, Aron, sinks into a deep, hallucinatory grief that eventually drives him to suicide at sea while attempting to flee to New Zealand. Years later, their emotionally scarred son, Sidner, inherits this legacy of depression. While married, Sidner enters a destructive, secret affair with a volatile older woman, Fanny Udde. When Fanny becomes pregnant and cuts him off, the heartbreak triggers a severe mental breakdown for Sidner. Decades later, it falls to his son, Victor, to finally break the cycle of family trauma by staging the Bach Christmas Oratorio his grandmother never finished.