The film is a black comedy and takes the bureaucratic incompetence and official corruption of the 1980ies in Bulgaria to their absurd and nightmarish conclusion. It tells the story of a Kafkan 'man of no importance' who by bureaucratic error is issued with a dead certificate, and such is the rigidity and all-powerfulness of the bureaucracy, that being officially dead it is literally impossible for him to prove to continue living. Finally, he gives up hope and decides to follow the official process through to its end by going to the cemetery and asking to be buried; the corrupt cemetery officials try to help him but there is no sane way out of insanity.