The annual famine in the north of Bangladesh forces the peasants Kholil and Gadu to leave their homes, together with their relatives. They sign on as seasonal workers in the ship-breaking yards in the south of the country. In the dockyards lining the beaches of Chittagong they dismantle in manual labour the waste of the western world: tankers and huge container ships. Here they are known as "lohakhor" - the "iron eaters". Director Shaheen Dill-Riaz witnesses a system of exploitation from which very few workers are able to escape: not only do the seasonal workers from the north carry out the most dangerous tasks in the shipyard, at the same time they also become ensnared in an inescapable debt trap. They are lured to the shipyards by a complicated system of advance payments and loans and have to buy their provisions from the local grocers. There they incur debts that are later deducted from their wages. Often the men don't even have enough money left to pay their fare home.