Witold and his companion Fuchs are staying at a guesthouse run by Madame Woytis. Upon discovering a sparrow hanging from a noose in the woods, Witold’s reality mutates into a whirlwind of tension, foreboding omens, and surrealistic logic as he becomes obsessed with Madame Woytis’s daughter Lena.

Genius comes unnervingly close to madness in this tale of an aspiring novelist, adapted by Andrzej Żuławski from an almost unfilmable book. Going off like a bundle of fireworks, this last hurrah from the wildly visionary auteur has a lunatic energy from the very start—you won’t be able to look away.