Based on the novel by Jáchym Topol. Potok works as a set designer in a small theater. He is in his thirties and his life is essentially going nowhere. He views his surroundings and himself with contempt. His aimless life only changes when he meets Černá. The couple in love escapes from the city. Inevitably, however, they once again encounter human calculation, shallowness, and bad taste. Potok falls back into his former skepticism, which leads to the total breakdown of their relationship. Černá leaves him, and a desperate Potok slowly comes to a more conciliatory attitude toward the world, where there is no longer any place for great love and dark romance. Unlike Jáchym Topol's literary work of the same name, which takes place during the three years after 1989, the film ignores the time frame. It focuses on the hero's internal conflicts, which are timeless.

In the original fairy tale, Otesánek eats whatever he finds – he doesn't even shy away from cannibalism. But times are changing, and his appetite has grown considerably. After eating his mother and father, the puppet Otesánek sets out into the world in search of food. Will the big city survive the attack of this uncouth creature?

The psyche of a ruthless secret agent in Cold War Czechoslovakia begins to unravel when he obsesses over the girlfriend of a suspected subversive he is tracking. This taut political thriller is a bleak and potent rendering of the emotional destruction wreaked by totalitarianism.