In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut. She studies his stint as a proletariat hero, how that heroism was created, and what became of him.

By combining documentary and fictional footage, this film portrays the Polish Solidarity strike that took place at the Gdansk shipyard in the summer of 1980. Told from the perspective of an alcoholic television journalist working under orders to smear one of Solidarity's key figures, coined the "man of iron."