A documentary short examining the language and performance of auctioneering, filmed at the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship in Pennsylvania.

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.

A London art broker goes to Copenhagen where he requires the services of a secretary fluent in Danish, English, and German. He falls deeply in love with the woman, despite the fact that he knows virtually nothing about her. She insists on not being married in a church, and after they are married, some bad things from her past begin surfacing in subtly supernatural ways, and he must find the best way to deal with them without destroying their relationship.