In a dark and foreboding future, a nuclear apocalypse has left the population decimated, leading shadowy government forces to embrace genetics research and cloning as a means to maintain the population. Humble watch repairman Pernat is one such creation, a manufactured man stumbling through life unaware of his own origins and trying to make sense of his fragmentary memories. Strikingly surreal and remarkably grim, Piotr Szulkin's futuristic re-imagining of the classic 1914 novel by Gustav Meyrink posits a future that looks disturbingly like the past, with the state's quest to create the "perfect human" inevitably evoking parallels with Nazi eugenics programs, while omnipresent advertisements for sleeping pills and plastic surgery takes satirical aim at the excesses of Western consumer culture.