"I remember my father. He loved small cookies - they were the highest form of happiness for him. But dreams are what he loved the most. He would have a dream on the tip of his tongue and say: I've got a dream. He also liked shortbread, but in a different sort of way."

This film, about painting, creating and all of life's problems opens with the aforementioned words. An artist shows his young son that behind the reality we see, there lies another reality, only seen through the world of painting. The father dies. The boy grows up with his mother who despises painting, for the simple reason that she despises poverty. He leaves home, has an unsuccesful stay at an art school and then tries to express himself as an artist in various ways - using large formats and expiring much paint. But, childhood, although forgotten during the stormy teenage years always creeps up within the mind of the middle-aged.

The artist in the film makes sad attempts at working with his father's old paintings as a guiding rule. It doesn't work out, and trying psychiatric help seems to do more harm then good. In the end, his pessimism is so great theat he becomes a minimalist. "Small Cookies" is a crossing of various artistic borders - from street corner portraits to modernism. The tone is both sad and funny. The film points out the theory that, the impulses that drive an artist cannot be picked up from just anywhere, and if the art is going to be convincing, these impulses have to be selected from actual experiences.