In rural Poland of 1949, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Irena (Agata Kulesza) together record folk songs of love, beverage and weights, gross and elementary. Under the Mazurek Ensemble, they organize auditions to find musicians and dancers to highlight what Poland has best to offer in the matter, ensuring that “people’s art will never be thrown into garbage and it will not be wasted anymore. ”
At one of these audiences, Zula (Joanna Kulig) arrives, a mysterious young woman who claims to be a country girl who does not play any Polish folk song but one she taught in a Russian film. Irena suspects this young woman of being a con artist, but Wiktor does not take into account anything, being conquered by the beauty of her face. About Zula, she talks “in the bargain” that her father has killed her – she defends herself by saying that her father “confused her mother so I used a knife to show him the difference between us.”
It does not take long and Zula becomes one of the stars of the ensemble, not satisfied with the demands of the authorities to sing and songs that would glorify Stalin and the agricultural reform. When Wiktor lurks a chance to flee the country in 1952, he urges Zula to flee with him. But will the girl’s pragmatic priorities be synchronized with his Western dreams?