The film tells a story of two scrap pickers in a Polish town of Łodz- the title hero Edi and his friend Jureczek. Edi spends his idle hours poring over books found in the trash. He lives quietly, avoiding "the brothers," booze-running thugs who rule their neighborhood. The brothers are maniacally protective of their sister, Princess. They hire Edi to tutor her, and Edi becomes embroiled in her affair with a gypsy, evincing a gentleness and self-knowledge that belies his lowly social station. Through this entangelment Edi is wrongly accused of having raped the girl. He severely punished for that but accepts his fate taking care of the girl's child.