The Home of Dark Butterflies

Fourteen-year-old Juhani, marked by an early trauma and passed between foster homes since he was eight, is sent to a boys’ home on a remote island run by its stern superintendent, Olavi Harjula. When the school’s funding is threatened over Harjula’s severe methods, he sets the boys to raising silkworms to keep it afloat. The others fall in line; Juhani, still holding out for the family he believes will take him back, does not.