Baseado no livro O Pássaro Pintado, de Jerzy Kosinski, o filme acompanha as desventuras de um menino judeu durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Perseguidos, seus pais o deixam com uma mãe adotiva. Mas a mulher morre, e o garoto é obrigado a sobreviver sozinho. Ele anda pelo interior, visitando vilas e fazendas. Pelo caminho, encontra várias pessoas e sofre com a brutalidade de camponeses supersticiosos e testemunha a violência de soldados russos e alemães.
Apesar de ser considerado um herói pelos alemães, sendo reconhecido pelos seus esforços na Primeira Guerra Mundial, Manfred von Richthofen fica dividido entre seu desgosto pela guerra e a responsabilidade com seus homens.
A motley of vacationers on a bus headed for a week long vacation at a seaside resort. Among them: a single, moderately famous singer; a nerdy, onanistic man; a couple of old ladies reaching senility; a couple of young gals looking for an amorous adventure; a family with a boy unsure about where he fits sexually; a beautiful woman that, besides working as a trip guide, has pretensions of being a music composer; a couple of gay men; and another family where the parents are stuck in a sexual ice age while their twentyish daughter is looking to connect with a man.
Lovers & Murderers is about the ongoing war between those who have and those who want to have what the others have. The have-nots see themselves as poor victims trying to get for themselves what is justly theirs. But when the have-nots become haves, they continue to see themselves as victims of the hordes baying for what is justly theirs, and they have neither the energy nor the security to enjoy what they have obtained. The movie takes place in the microcosm of a small apartment building. The principal goal of the young people who share rooms in the building is to move into their own room and, some day, a real apartment. They scheme to get what they're after: form short-lived alliances, petition, frighten, marry, become pregnant, anything that might work. Lovers & Murderers presents Páral's vision of mankind caught in a cyclical process in which ideology pales before the pettiness, cruelty, and self-justification of human nature.
