We meet Saira and Aleena. Two immigrant girls who are sitting on the sideline during their class's swimming lesson. Saira is infatuated with Geir, but her future is about to change forever.

SWIMMING LESSONS documents the rituals, hopes, and doubts within an evangelical support group for teenage girls, blending Pentecostal ceremony with stories of two of its members; one who wants to learn to swim before she loses her sight, and one whose mother drowned in a flood.

While Mrs. Jacobs gives swimming lessons to the young caregiver Nadja in her retirement home, the two develop a quiet attraction to each other. Even though the old woman secretly longs for it, she struggles with social values and her own feelings, which deny her this closeness.

A little boy steps in to a new world. The mother of the four-year-old Jonas brings him to his first swimming lesson. Jonas is scared and wants to go home. While trying to escape, he falls into the deep bath and nobody notices him. While floating on his swimming wings he has to try to rescue himself.