"If you're sad, and like beer, I'm your lady..."

Winnipeg, 1933. It's the midst of the Great Depression and beer Baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to find the saddest music in the world. Musicians from across the globe - from Mexican mariachi to Scottish bagpipers to African drummers - travel to Winnipeg to play their tunes in hope of winning the $25,000 grand prize.

Failed Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) bings his amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) home to his native Winnipeg and enter the competition as the American contingent. He soon finds himself embroiled in a family reunion as treacherous as the competition itself!

Part musical melodrama, part tongue-in-cheek social satire, Guy Maddin's expressionistic film achieves a level of lunacy rarely seen since the Marx brothers.