In a 20-minute section (filmed in colour) added by Skolimowski in 1981 he explains how the original was withheld by Polish censors of the time and that this was a principal cause of his leaving his country; however following liberalisation in Poland, he was invited to resuscitate it.
The introduction includes, apart from some fictional apocalyptic passages, shots of Beirut ruined by the civil wars of the 1970s, where Skolimowski is working as an actor on Volker Schlöndorff's German film Die Fälschung (Circle of Deceit), and also shots of London featuring demonstrations in favour of Solidarność, Speaker's Corner, and an exhibition of Skolimowski's own paintings.
These sections include cameo roles by Bruno Ganz, David Essex, Mike Sarne and others.
Supposedly taking speed (although it is later revealed the pills are a placebo), and carousing in the cattle truck of a freight train, the group offers various satirical sidelights on Polish society of the 1960s.
The characters also reflect that the truck may have been one of those in which the former generation were transported during World War II to the Nazi death camps.