A countryman kills his father and heads for the big city. On his way, he meets the most bizarre and allegorical types: a robber, a drag queen who thinks he's Carmen Miranda, a black king, a fallen black angel, a priest, two whores, a pregnant cowboy, among others.

Amid a tense political climate, the opposition leader of an unnamed Cold War-era country is killed in what looks like an accident. When a prosecutor finds evidence of a government cover-up, witnesses start to get targeted... A thinly veiled account of the 1963 assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis and its aftermath, Z captures the outrage about the US-backed military junta that ruled Greece at the time of its release.