Stroszek is a ballad that can be taken as light comedy, but it has a serious undertone. It is an exploration of how people may change one prison for another. The plot, what there is of it, is very straight forward, yet so spontaneous and unexpected in its shifts that the viewer is left stunned.
A simple-minded street musician (Bruno Stroszek), who may be a crook, his hooker girlfriend Eva (Eva Mattes), and Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) an old man of 70 who loves them, flee Berlin and the prostitute's pimps (not one, but two, Burkhard Driest and Wilhelm von Hamburg) for a better life in that paradise on the other side of the Atlantic. Through the old man's nephew Clayton (Clayton Sziapinski) they end up at Railway Flats, Wisconsin, perhaps the sinkhole of America. Using their new freedom Eva starts working in a diner and Bruno finds a job as a mechanic in Clayton's beat up garage, where Ely (Ely Rodriguez), a Native American or "American Indian", also works. Ely seems to view all these happenings with subtle amusement. The old man, Scheitz, hangs out, testing his theories about personal magnetism and shrinking in the bleak Wisconsin winter.
