The Contest

Karl Højby Hansen has lived the first 12 years of his life in a small conservative village in Denmark with his mother, grandmother and grandfather. Thus it comes with a great shock when his mother tells Karl that they will be moving to the capital city, Copenhagen. Nothing can prepare him for his new surrounds, an ethnically mixed area, where 80% of the children at his new school are bilingual. Immediately Karl quickly starts to plan his escape back to his grandmother and grandfather. Sawsan, a young Islamic girl in Karl’s class, takes him under her caring wings and tries to integrate him into big city life with all its slang and hipness. When one of Sawsan's homemade songs are being chosen for the biggest song contest in the country, held near Karl's village, she faces opposition from her family who don't approve of her dream to sing. But Karl has other ideas, and with both of them heading in the same direction he hatches a plan that will involve the train-ride of their life!