The year is 1961. At the school for unwanted boys, called simply 'the Home', there are 40 boys incarcerated, ages between 8 - 18 years. These boys have been placed there by the Danish social work authorities. The principal of the school is one Knud Bosse, a sadistic man who violently mistreats the boys. Nobody is spared.
Life at the Home is miserable to put it mildly. There is barely any actual schooling, instead there is plenty of work detail to be done in various workshops and market gardens. But one day Dennis, a rangy youth of 15, gets the incredible idea of forming a secret Jazz band with some of his mates. Dennis' great heo and Jazz idol is Duke Ellington; Dennis had been taught to play the piano by his late father, who was a Jazz pianist.
With fierce commitment, love, and an apparently inexhaustible supply of cunning,
Dennis and his comrades manage to smuggle instruments to an outlying barn for 9 boys to form a band. The entire project is top secret - as is a tunnel Dennis finds under the old barn leading beyond the school's compound. The secret tunnel becomes of paramount importance for their band but also offers a glimmer of light on an otherwise dark horizon.
