A young mother returns to her village after a hospital stay and is forced to deal with an emotionally distant husband and her own simmering guilt.

Based on a script by Andrzej Żuławski, this is a fascinating on-screen dialogue between father and son that combines nostalgia and fury, the sublime with humor, and old-school style with a sharp, penetrating look at Polish reality. The eponymous bird talk is the language used by those excluded from the aggressive majority: a history teacher tormented by children, a teacher of Polish studies fired from his job, a girl who cleans a banker’s villa, a florist with a club foot and a student with a fascination for cinema. Pushed to the margins by the extreme right, they defend themselves with irony, songs and quotes from the classics.

Conflicts between the scouts and boys in a reformatory at the common scout camp, are sometimes very strong. One of the scouts dies. Jacek does not trust the police, who recognizes that it was an unfortunate accident. Sam believes in a world of a crystalline division into evil and good. He begins a private investigation. He brings a strict regime to the camp.