In The Passerby, poems, home movies, interviews, photographs, and footage filmed all over the world combine to form a kind of necromancy: impression, imprint, appearance of many lives that were not lived without a trace. What can be read out of pictures and movement, facial expressions and gestures? Donald McWilliams' compelling contrast montage, visual effects, and use of music provide a meditation on the mysteries of existence.

A random passer-by is invited to a bachelor party of rich men where he tells a tale of loss to those present.

Max Baumstein is a reputable businessman who founded an international organization fighting against violations of human rights. Why would he commit an act that apparently negates the principles he has striven for so long to uphold? As he is tried for first-degree murder for killing a Paraguayan ambassador in cold blood, he reveals a secret about himself that he kept hidden from his wife Lina. His act is the conclusion of a struggle that started many decades earlier in his childhood...

On a summer day, the paths of two boys unexpectedly cross.

A woman who has a terrible secret to conceal takes refuge on a barge.

The Passerby is locked up and will free herself. And by following someone very different to herself, she will set out to discover something improbable that will shape her.

Jiwan quits her job and start working on a script to become a film director. She has worked on her script for many years but making it into a film seems almost impossible. As she runs around the field in frustration, shee sees a shining rainbow in a puddle and finds hope to work on a new project. She writes to a new script of the title 'Rainbow' that is about the fantastic band playing by 7 color.

The protagonist of "Passerby" is writer and filmmaker Tadeusz Konwicki. His story, which reflects the paradoxes of the 20th century history, is commented by means of fragments of his films, documentary newsreels and stage productions.

A nighttime odyssey just before New Year's Eve: a woman and a man walking along a back road, caught up in a fight. Their conflict spreads out around them: it covers the dirty coat the woman is wearing, a child she meets and a waiter who doesn't want to leave her alone. Between external stimuli and internal conditions an idiosyncratic and seemingly inescapable space of repressed aggression and confrontation emerges.

A young man collects bottles from people's garbage and he is trying to find a way out of that situation. A middle-aged waitress will try to help him.