The story is inter-cut with scenes from the film they write, in which Trier plays a renegade doctor trying to cure a modern-day epidemic.

Lars and Niels go to Germany, where they meet Udo Kiev, who describes the Allied bombing of Cologne during the Second World War.

After the trip, Niels goes to a hospital where he undergoes a minor surgical procedure and while there tells Lars to go to see Palle, a pathologist who is performing an autopsy on a man who has recently died of an unknown disease.

The last day, Lars and Niels have a dinner with their producer, to whom they reveal the end of the film, that Mesmer and his medical kit have spread the disease.

[9] In 2023, The Criterion Collection released a 3K restoration of Epidemic as part of the Blu-ray box set, Lars von Trier's Europe Trilogy.