A wintry gloom has settled upon Depression-era Winnipeg in Maddin's brew-ha-ha, a joyously stilted comedy wed to the extravagance of a dizzy thirties musical. To dig out from beneath the snowy pall, Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini), a bewitching beer baroness, announces a competition to determine which nation possesses the most sorrowful song. Performers from every lamentable land descend upon Port-Huntly's brewery to challenge the world with their doleful strains. Adapted from an original screenplay by author Kazuo Ishiguro, this heady brew floats the bubbly sorrows of individual souls in a frothy keg of universal misery, stirred all the while by Maddin's intoxicating wit.