Release date: | September 26, 2025 |
Director: | Neeraj Ghaywan |
Cast: | Vishal Jethwa, Ishaan Khatter, Janhvi Kapoor, Shalini Vatsa, Harshika Parmar |
Language: | Hindi |
I kept pinching myself while watching Homebound, to be sure I was awake. Was this a dream? Did this film actually come from the Hindi industry that has spent recent decades largely ignoring caste oppression, and the past 11 years pandering to majoritarian forces?
Writer-director Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound is the story of two impoverished young men from a north Indian village – one Muslim, one Dalit – who hope that a job in the police force will give them the social standing and respect that has so far eluded them. An unexpected rivalry, further financial pressures and the COVID-19 pandemic each add new chapters to their life-long friendship.
Ghaywan is an uncommon presence in contemporary Hindi filmdom, since his understanding of caste has been a hallmark of his slim but impactful body of work, starting with his debut feature, Masaan (Crematorium), that won two awards at the Cannes film festival in 2015. What makes Homebound unusual in this context is that it is produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, a company reputed for glossy films about wealthy Indians. (Dharma also produced Shazia Iqbal’s Dhadak 2, which too is an out-and-out anti-caste film – another surprise from the Hindi industry this year.)
Homebound was subjected to several cuts by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which is currently on a warpath against cinema that acknowledges caste atrocities, as I’ve learnt during my reporting on the subject in the past two years. Having said that, given the harassment that many other Indian producers have faced at the CBFC in this decade, it is a relief that this film escaped with edits that have not ruined the experience of viewing it.
Homebound dwells at length on another topic for which another Hindi filmmaker, Anubhav Sinha, was penalised: Sinha’s Bheed was chopped beyond recognition by the CBFC in a bid to pare down its portrayal of government apathy during the pandemic. Homebound has survived despite this being one of its central themes.
To describe Homebound as brave is, therefore, an understatement. Making it even more noteworthy is its empathy towards Muslims in a decade in which Hindi cinema has unabashedly demonised the community, going so far as to distort history to make Muslim individuals the villains of episodes in which they were, in truth, the heroes. Exhibit A: Kesari released in 2019.
Ghaywan’s film was premiered at Cannes this summer, and won the International People’s Choice Award second runner-up spot at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is also India’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar race, an arena in which it has got itself a starting-point advantage in the form of Hollywood A-lister and international film legend Martin Scorsese, who is an Executive Producer.
Courage is no guarantee of cinematic quality. Homebound is effective and captivating because its political awareness is woven into an intelligently crafted screenplay, and brought to life by the scintillating performances of its young leads.
Vishal Jethwa plays Chandan Kumar, who hesitates to use the surname that would disclose his Dalit identity to those around him, and does not apply for jobs in the reserved category, as is his right, for fear of being ostracised. Ishaan Khatter is Mohammad Shoaib, a hard-working youngster who remains determined and driven despite facing constant suspicion and Islamophobic jibes.
Shoaib is filled with a simmering rage at these injustices. Chandan is more hesitant about asserting himself, except when the need arises to defend his friend. When it comes to himself, he requires a nudge from Shoaib to claim what is due to him from the society that conspires to keep him and his people down.
Jethwa was chilling as a rapist-killer in 2019’s Mardaani 2 headlined by Rani Mukerji. His unfaltering turn as the immensely likeable Chandan is evidence of remarkable versatility. Ghaywan has not blackfaced him for the role, making this casting choice – of a light-skinned, light-eyed actor – a rebellion against the stereotyping of the physical appearance of Dalits on the Indian screen.
Khatter stood out even when saddled with jaded writing in the streaming shows A Suitable Boy (2020) and The Royals (2025). He’s a natural before the camera, and buries himself completely here in Shoaib’s personality and milieu.
The actors’ chemistry underpins Homebound’s emotional resonance. Despite its grim preoccupations, the screenplay finds space for fun, laughter and relaxation, allowing the actors to generate such warmth towards each other that I found myself willing Shoaib and Chandan to remain friends forever when tension erupts between them. Even in those moments, the writing and acting gently foreground their vulnerability and desperation, thus allowing them to retain audience sympathy.
Many of the conversations in the film are profoundly political, but they are never expository, strained or sermonic.
These men feel real, so do their surroundings. The expressive background score by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor rises and falls in step with Nitin Baid’s carefully calibrated editing that imbues the events unfolding on screen with the rhythm of lived realities.
While the representation of anti-Muslim prejudice and casteism are intrinsic to Homebound, Shoaib and Chandan are written as being not overly conscious of their differing identities except to the extent that each is protective of the other when the environment turns hostile, mirroring genuine friendships in the real world.
Homebound stands by the marginalised without pedestalising them, as films sometimes do when they are created by those who do not realise that positive stereotyping too is a form of othering. For one, it points to gender discrimination in Chandan’s family. It also underlines the heterogeneity among Dalits through the medium of Chandan’s girlfriend, Sudha Bharti played by Janhvi Kapoor, whose better economic circumstances cause her to briefly take a blinkered view of his struggles.
Sudha is a small player in the story, belying Kapoor’s presence in the film’s marketing – but if you ignore the impression created by the promotions, that’s really not a flaw. Small is not trivial. In a sense, she is B.R. Ambedkar’s voice in Homebound, exhorting a fellow Dalit to get an education that she views as a means to securing her and his rightful place in society. She also challenges Chandan in little ways to introspect about his patriarchal attitudes.
So though Homebound is focused on two men, it is not men-centric in the way conventional commercial Indian cinema is. Chandan’s mother and sister, played by Shalini Vatsa and Harshika Parmar – both stand-out members of the solid supporting cast – are pivotal to the plot, and are given well-defined arcs despite their limited screen time.
For the most part, Homebound is a nuanced chronicle of abiding friendship in dire situations, social prejudice, callousness towards the poorest among us, claims of victimhood by those whose communities have a track record of being oppressors, and the continuing victimisation of historically oppressed social groups. The film strays from its subtlety only a couple of times, to emphasise a point already conveyed with clarity. But this is a minor complaint about an otherwise consistently mature narrative.
Shoaib and Chandan’s saga is inspired by journalist Basharat Peer’s news feature titled “Taking Amrit Home” published in The New York Times (it is available online under the headline “A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway”). Peer’s article emerged from his search for two men from Uttar Pradesh, Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, after a photograph of Saiyub cradling Amrit in his lap on the margins of a highway went viral on social media, at a time when migrant workers in Indian cities had been forced to walk hundreds of kilometers back to their villages after the Central government abruptly imposed a nationwide lockdown in May 2020 without making adequate arrangements for the poor. The film is a fictionalised account of these young men’s lives, with the story credited to Peer, Ghaywan and Sumit Roy, a screenplay by Ghaywan, and dialogues by Ghaywan, Varun Grover and Shreedhar Dubey.
“Interfaith friendships in India are not as uncommon as the regnant political discourse might suggest,” Peer wrote simply in his NYT profile of Saiyub and Amrit. Homebound revisits this aspect of Indian life that has been fading away from the Hindi screen in recent years, in addition to confronting the caste system.
Homebound is shorn of Amar Akbar Anthony-style melodrama and overt messaging that once characterised Hindi film portrayals of communal harmony. Like that picture of Saiyub and Amrit on social media, Shoaib and Chandan’s devotion to each other speaks for itself, serving as an urgent reminder of the amity that survives among us against all odds.
Running time: | 122 minutes in theatre listings |
Poster courtesy: IMDB
This is a long version of an article published in The Economic Times on September 27, 2025 under the headline "Chronicle of a Friendship in Dire Times"
