A moving film about the relationship between art and reality from well-known Bengali director Mrinal Sen, In Search of Famine is a movie about making a movie. A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It's a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India. Once in the town everything begins to go wrong. An actress walks off the set and a local girl quits when the film's subject becomes to personal, forestalling production. Most ironically however, the presence of the film crew begins to drive up the price of food in the village, leaving the residents angry and fearful of another famine. The tension increases and finally the film crew is driven from the town. In Search of Famine makes an important point: good intentions are not enough to overcome the demands of reality upon works of art.