An Innuit hunter races his sled home with a fresh-caught halibut. This fish pervades the entire film, in real and imaginary form. Meanwhile, Axel tags fish in New York as a naturalist’s gofer. He’s happy there, but a messenger arrives to bring him to Arizona for his uncle’s wedding. It’s a ruse to get Axel into the family business. In Arizona, Axel meets two odd women: vivacious, needy, and plagued by neuroses and familial discord. He gets romantically involved with one, while the other, rich but depressed, plays accordion tunes to a gaggle of pet turtles

Matko is a small time hustler, living by the Danube with his 17 year old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her.

Black marketeers Marko and Blacky manufacture and sell weapons to the Communist resistance in WWII Belgrade, living the good life along the way. Marko’s surreal duplicity propels him up the ranks of the Communist Party, and he eventually abandons Blacky and steals his girlfriend. After a lengthy stay in a below-ground shelter, the couple reemerges during the Yugoslavian Civil War of the 1990s as Marko realizes that the situation is ripe for exploitation.

A man, shaken by fate after his wife’s death, chooses to be a monk.