A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.

Released from prison after five years, con-artist Szu is sent packing by his young wife; he heads for the town of Lutyn where he runs a con and attracts the interest of Jurek, a young cab driver who imagines himself a great grifter. Szu ("Sharp") teaches Jurek a few tricks enabling the young man to win some money in Wroclaw, then Sharp departs with Jola, a prostitute who offers him a mark. How that plays out, Jurek's determination to win big, Sharp's cold calculations, and the wages of sin await.

The film is set in 1905, in a time of feverish revolutionary underground activity in Poland partitioned between three neighbours. All the characters are committed anarchists. The bomb maker puts an invention together to place it at the disposal of young inexperienced terrorists fighting against Tsarist oppression. The story follows the passing of this bomb from anarchist to anarchist as several attempts are made on the life of Tsarist governor general, until, at the end, it is effectively and harmlessly defused by a bomb expert. The presence of the bomb has a destroying effect on all of the Polish revolutionaries, they either die or breakdown.

Set before the first World War in part of Poland under Austrian occupation, the story of a young boy in primary school who later grows up to become a rebellious, poetic-minded teen in the same school when the national movement toward liberation is under way. The story of a country where church and state work together to suppress the human spirit.