Follows the deterioration of an Afrikaner family isolated and shunned in the small community of Toorwater. Nothing seems to happen. Then a circus train loses its way and comes to rest in Toorwater, and a mysterious clown brings fresh magic to the stagnating family, but he also poses a threat to the rest of the community.

Based on Nicholas Ellenbogen's play of A Nativity, the trilingual (Afrikaans, English and Zulu) film tells a hilarious story about a government backed effort to put on a multiracial production of a play production of a nativity play by the local post office's staff in a tiny backwater village, on the eve of the new democracy.