September 1980: a movie crew comes to a Bengal village to make a film about a famine which killed five million people in 1943; the filmmakers intend to recreate the tragedy of those who died during this man-made famine, a side-product of World War II. Akalar Sandhaney documents the convivial life amongst the film crew and the hazards, problems and tensions of filmmaking on location, where the actors live a "double life" and the villagers, both simple and not-so-simple folk, watch their work with wonder and amusement. But as the filmmaking progresses, the uneasy coexistence of past and present begins eerily to dissolve for the famine-seekers, abetted by a village woman whose visions add yet a third dimension of time, that of the future. "In Search of Famine...winner of the Silver Bear at Berlin (Film Festival)...is (Sen's) most reflexive work, with an implicit critique of the whole parallel cinema movement" (J. Hoberman, Village Voice).