Hugo Starosta, expelled from the part of eastern Germany annexed by Poland after the Second World War, is one of the few who failed to get their lives back on track during the years of reconstruction.

Almost twenty years after the end of the war, he and his extended family still live in a fortress-like castle that is run by the state as a reception and refugee camp and has increasingly become a social housing project.

The accommodation — a one-room emergency quarters for eight people from three generations — is run-down, poor and filthy, Starosta herself is work-shy and blabbering, imperious and sometimes choleric.

The other Starostas and their personal environment also seem to spring from a panopticon of bizarre types; there is, for example, the elderly grandmother who simply does not want to die and complains about the coffin that she has already chosen and which she considers inferior.

Starosta's sister's boyfriend lives out his image as a chavish woman-pleaser, while the salesman, a gentle, modest man, represents the absolute antithesis to him.