Homebound (2025)

Film Screening: Homebound (2025)

- This blog is part of task given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. 

Film Title: Homebound  (Hindi)  

Director:  Neeraj  Ghaywan 

Screenplay: Neeraj Ghaywan, Sumit Roy 

Based on: A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway by Basharat Peer

PART I: PRE-SCREENING CONTEXT & ADAPTATION

1. SOURCE MATERIAL ANALYSIS:

The film Homebound (2025), directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, is adapted from Basharat Peer’s 2020 New York Times essay titled “A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway.” The original essay is a work of journalistic reportage that documents a real incident during India’s COVID-19 lockdown. It narrates the story of two migrant workers, Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub, who attempt to return to their village on foot after the sudden shutdown of transport and employment. The essay highlights the vulnerability of migrant labourers, the absence of state support, and the human cost of policy decisions made without planning for the poor.

In the essay, Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub are migrant textile workers employed in Surat. Their lives are defined by informal labour, daily wages, and economic insecurity. Their journey home is driven by survival rather than ambition. When the lockdown is announced, they lose their jobs overnight and are left without food, shelter, or transport. Amrit Kumar’s death during the journey exposes the brutal indifference of the system towards migrant workers, turning the essay into a powerful critique of state neglect and social inequality.

The film fictionalizes these real-life figures as Chandan and Shoaib, young men preparing for the police entrance examination. This adaptive change significantly alters the focus of the narrative. Instead of being positioned outside the system as labourers, the protagonists are shown as individuals who believe in the promise of institutional fairness. Their daily routines involve discipline, training, and exam preparation, symbolizing hope and ambition. Through this shift, the film expands the story from one of economic suffering to a broader exploration of dignity, aspiration, and belonging.

By changing the protagonists’ pre-lockdown employment from textile workers to aspiring police constables, the film reshapes its commentary on ambition and institutional dignity. In the original essay, ambition is limited to earning a livelihood and returning home safely. In the film, ambition becomes aspirational and political. Chandan and Shoaib believe that joining the police force will grant them respect, authority, and protection from caste and religious discrimination. The police uniform becomes a symbol of dignity and social acceptance. However, the film gradually reveals that this belief is fragile, as the system ultimately fails them during the crisis. Thus, while the essay exposes economic neglect, the film exposes the moral failure of institutions that promise dignity but deny it when it is most needed.

2. PRODUCTION CONTEXT:

The production context of Homebound is significant because the film lists Martin Scorsese as an Executive Producer. Scorsese’s involvement is not merely symbolic; he reportedly mentored director Neeraj Ghaywan during the script development and editing stages, reviewing multiple cuts of the film. Known for his commitment to social realism and character-driven storytelling, Scorsese’s influence can be seen in the film’s restrained narrative style and emphasis on realism.

Scorsese’s mentorship contributes to the film’s realist tone through its use of long takes, minimal background music, and naturalistic performances. The film avoids melodrama and emotional manipulation, instead allowing silence, exhaustion, and everyday gestures to convey suffering. The editing is slow and observational, forcing the audience to sit with discomfort rather than offering dramatic relief. This approach aligns Homebound with global traditions of realist and neorealist cinema.

This realist style played a crucial role in the film’s international reception. Western audiences at festivals such as Cannes and TIFF responded positively to the film’s authenticity, political honesty, and understated storytelling. The film was read as part of a global discourse on migration, inequality, and state failure, making it accessible to international viewers unfamiliar with the specific Indian context.

However, the same stylistic choices affected the film’s domestic reception. Indian audiences, more accustomed to fast-paced commercial cinema and emotional spectacle, found the film slow and bleak. As a result, despite critical acclaim and international recognition, Homebound struggled to find a large domestic audience. This contrast highlights the tension between artistic realism and commercial viability in contemporary Indian cinema.

PART II: NARRATIVE STRUCTURE & THEMATIC STUDY

3. THE POLITICS OF THE "UNIFORM":

 In Homebound, the police uniform is not merely a professional outfit but a powerful political and social symbol. In the first half of the film, Chandan and Shoaib view the uniform as a tool for social mobility, dignity, and protection. Coming from marginalized backgrounds, they believe that wearing the uniform will allow them to escape everyday discrimination. For Chandan, who is a Dalit, the uniform promises freedom from caste-based humiliation and the shame attached to his identity. For Shoaib, a Muslim, it represents national belonging and acceptance in a society that often treats him with suspicion.

The film carefully constructs their faith in the uniform through scenes of physical training, exam preparation, and disciplined routine. These moments suggest that hard work and merit can lead to success. However, this belief is gradually dismantled when the film reveals the harsh reality of India’s meritocratic system: 2.5 million applicants competing for only 3,500 police posts. This overwhelming imbalance exposes the fragility of the idea of fairness. The film shows that meritocracy operates more as a promise than a reality, especially for the marginalized.

Thus, the politics of the uniform lies in its false assurance. While it symbolizes authority and dignity, the film ultimately reveals that the uniform cannot protect individuals from systemic inequality. Through this, Homebound critiques the state’s institutions, showing how they generate hope but fail to deliver justice or dignity.

4. INTERSECTIONALITY: CASTE AND RELIGION:

Homebound portrays caste and religious discrimination through micro-aggressions rather than overt violence, emphasizing how oppression operates subtly in everyday life. The film highlights intersectionality by showing how caste and religion overlap to shape the protagonists’ experiences.

In Case A, Chandan applies under the ‘General’ category instead of the ‘Reserved’ category, even though he is eligible for reservation. This decision reveals the deep shame associated with Dalit identity. Chandan fears that claiming reservation will mark him as inferior and expose him to further discrimination, even if he succeeds. His choice reflects internalized caste oppression, where the victim feels compelled to erase his identity to gain acceptance. The film presents caste not through physical violence but through silence, hesitation, and self-denial.

In Case B, Shoaib experiences religious othering in a workplace scene where a colleague refuses to take a water bottle from him. This moment is quiet and non-confrontational, yet deeply humiliating. The refusal echoes practices of untouchability and reflects how Muslims are subtly treated as impure or untrustworthy. The scene exemplifies “quiet cruelty”, showing that discrimination does not always rely on abusive language or aggression; it can be communicated through small gestures of exclusion.

Through these scenes, the film demonstrates how caste and religion function together to marginalize individuals, making everyday spaces sites of silent violence.

5. THE PANDEMIC AS NARRATIVE DEVICE:

The introduction of the COVID-19 pandemic marks a distinct tonal and structural shift in Homebound. The first half of the film functions as a drama of ambition, focusing on preparation, hope, and the belief in institutional success. The second half transforms into a survival narrative, depicting hunger, exhaustion, fear, and death.

The pandemic does not function as a convenient plot twist; rather, it acts as an inevitable exposure of pre-existing “slow violence.” Long before the lockdown, Chandan and Shoaib are already victims of structural inequality, limited opportunity, and social exclusion. The lockdown merely accelerates these conditions and makes them visible. The sudden withdrawal of state support reveals how fragile their lives truly are.

By using the pandemic as a narrative device, the film shifts genre from a story about dreams and social mobility to a survival thriller that emphasizes abandonment. The crisis strips away the illusion of institutional care and exposes the state’s inability to protect even those who aspire to serve it. The film suggests that the pandemic did not create inequality; it exposed the injustice already embedded in society.

PART III: CHARACTER & PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

6. SOMATIC PERFORMANCE (BODY LANGUAGE):

Vishal Jethwa’s performance as Chandan is marked by a powerful use of somatic acting, where the body communicates psychological and social trauma more than dialogue. Reviewers note that Chandan physically “shrinks” in the presence of authority figures, and this physicality reflects the internalized trauma of the Dalit experience. Jethwa often lowers his shoulders, avoids eye contact, and hesitates before speaking, creating the impression of a body conditioned to expect humiliation.

This is most evident in the scene where Chandan is asked to state his full name. The question, seemingly simple, carries social danger because a Dalit surname can immediately reveal caste identity. Jethwa’s body responds instinctively his posture tightens, his voice softens, and his movements slow. He pauses before answering, as if calculating the consequences of self-disclosure. This hesitation is not fear of authority alone but fear of caste recognition, revealing how caste oppression operates at the level of the body. Through these physical choices, Jethwa shows how centuries of discrimination become embodied, making the character’s body a site of social memory and trauma.

7. THE "OTHERED" CITIZEN:

Ishaan Khatter’s portrayal of Shoaib is defined by what critics describe as “simmering angst.” Unlike Chandan’s inward fear, Shoaib carries a quiet, contained anger that surfaces through clenched jaws, controlled speech, and moments of sharp silence. Khatter avoids overt emotional display, choosing instead to convey frustration through restraint, which makes the character’s pain more unsettling.

Shoaib’s character arc from rejecting a job opportunity in Dubai to seeking a government position in India reflects the complex relationship minority communities have with the idea of “home.” By refusing to migrate abroad, Shoaib expresses a desire to belong in his own country and to claim dignity through service to the Indian state. His choice reflects loyalty, hope, and belief in institutional acceptance. However, as a Muslim, Shoaib is repeatedly subjected to suspicion and subtle exclusion, which makes his belonging conditional. Khatter’s performance captures this contradiction: Shoaib wants to stay, but society constantly pushes him away. His simmering anger thus becomes the emotional expression of a citizen who loves his home but is never fully accepted by it.

8. GENDERED PERSPECTIVES:

Sudha Bharti’s character, played by Janhvi Kapoor, has been criticized by some reviewers as a “narrative device” rather than a fully developed individual. While it is true that Sudha’s personal arc is less complex than those of the male protagonists, her role serves an important thematic function within the film. She represents educational empowerment, privilege, and social mobility, offering a counterpoint to Chandan and Shoaib’s struggles.

Sudha’s access to education, confidence, and institutional support highlights how class and gender intersect differently than caste and religion. She is not burdened by the same level of social stigma, which allows her to imagine a future beyond survival. Rather than viewing her character as underwritten, Sudha can be seen as a structural contrast that exposes inequality. Her presence emphasizes that education and privilege can buffer individuals from systemic collapse, making her role thematically necessary even if emotionally restrained.

PART IV: CINEMATIC LANGUAGE

9. VISUAL AESTHETICS:

Cinematographer Pratik Shah employs a “warm, grey, and dusty” visual palette to reflect physical fatigue and emotional depletion. During the highway migration sequences, the camera consistently avoids wide, scenic shots and instead focuses on tight framing and close-ups. By isolating feet dragging across hot roads, sweat dripping from faces, and dirt clinging to skin, the film denies the audience any sense of visual relief.

These close-ups contribute to what critics describe as an “aesthetic of exhaustion.” The repeated emphasis on bodily strain forces viewers to experience the journey as physically oppressive rather than narratively dramatic. The framing traps the characters within their environment, visually mirroring their lack of escape. This approach refuses to romanticize suffering and instead makes exhaustion the dominant visual emotion of the film.

10. SOUNDSCAPE:

The sound design of Homebound, composed by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor, relies heavily on silence and minimal background score. Unlike traditional Bollywood melodramas, where music guides the audience’s emotional response, Homebound uses restraint. Silence dominates moments of suffering, allowing ambient sounds footsteps, breathing, wind, and distant traffic to convey distress.

This minimalist approach makes tragedy feel more real and unsettling. Instead of instructing viewers how to feel, the film creates emotional discomfort through absence. The lack of melodramatic cues mirrors the absence of institutional care within the narrative. By avoiding emotional manipulation, the soundscape reinforces the film’s realist aesthetic and aligns it with global social cinema rather than commercial Hindi cinema.

PART V: CRITICAL DISCOURSE & ETHICS (POST-SCREENING SEMINAR)

11. THE CENSORSHIP DEBAT:

The censorship debate surrounding Homebound reveals the state’s deep anxiety about films that expose social fissures such as caste, religion, and everyday discrimination. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) ordered 11 cuts, including muting the word “Gyan” and removing a dialogue referencing “aloo gobhi.” On the surface, these changes may appear minor or even absurd, but their symbolic significance is profound. Both references occur in contexts that subtly point to caste hierarchies, food politics, and social exclusion issues that challenge the narrative of social harmony.

These specific cuts reflect the state’s discomfort with quiet, realist depictions of inequality rather than overt political slogans. Unlike violent or sensational scenes, Homebound uses everyday language and situations to reveal discrimination. By censoring seemingly harmless words and dialogues, the CBFC demonstrates how even indirect critiques of caste and class provoke anxiety. The censorship thus operates not to protect viewers, but to sanitize social reality and prevent audiences from confronting uncomfortable truths.

Actor Ishaan Khatter criticized this approach by pointing out the “double standards” applied to social films. According to him, commercial entertainers often escape scrutiny even when they promote violence or regressive stereotypes, while serious social films are subjected to excessive cuts for merely reflecting reality. His statement highlights how censorship disproportionately targets films that question power structures, reinforcing the idea that realism itself becomes political and therefore threatening when it centers marginalized lives.

12. THE ETHICS OF "TRUE STORY" ADAPTATIONS:

The ethical debate surrounding Homebound intensified after author Puja Changoiwala filed a plagiarism suit and the family of the real-life victim Amrit Kumar claimed they were unaware of the film’s release and inadequately compensated. These controversies raise important questions about the ethical responsibilities of filmmakers when adapting stories of the marginalized.

When filmmakers draw from real suffering, especially from vulnerable communities, ethical responsibility goes beyond legal adaptation rights. It includes acknowledgment, consent, fair compensation, and continued engagement with the people whose lives inspire the narrative. In the case of Homebound, critics argue that transforming lived trauma into award-winning cinema without meaningful involvement of the original subjects risks turning suffering into cultural capital.

The defense often offered in such cases is that the film “raises awareness.” However, awareness alone does not justify exclusion. If the original subjects and creators are erased or sidelined, the act of representation can become exploitative rather than empowering. Ethical adaptation requires standing by the lives being portrayed, not merely speaking for them. Homebound thus becomes a case study in the tension between artistic intention and moral accountability in socially conscious cinema.

13. COMMERCIAL VIABILITY VS. ART:

The reception of Homebound exposes a sharp tension between critical acclaim and commercial failure. Despite receiving standing ovations at international festivals like Cannes and being shortlisted for the Oscars, the film performed poorly at the domestic box office. Producer Karan Johar’s statement that he might not make “unprofitable” films like Homebound again reflects the harsh economic realities of the film industry.

Several factors contributed to this failure, including limited theatrical screens, flawed distribution, and competition with mainstream commercial cinema. Post-pandemic Indian audiences, shaped by streaming platforms and spectacle-driven entertainment, appear less willing to engage with slow, realist, emotionally demanding films in theatres. Serious cinema, though critically respected, struggles to attract mass audiences without institutional support or aggressive marketing.

This disconnect reveals a broader issue in the post-pandemic Indian market: serious social cinema is consumed more as prestige than as popular culture. Films like Homebound gain international validation but lack domestic infrastructure to sustain them commercially. The case highlights how market forces often discourage risk-taking in socially engaged filmmaking, raising concerns about the future of realist cinema in India.

PART VI: FINAL SYNTHESIS

Dignity Denied: The Journey Home in 

Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound

Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound (2025) is a deeply political and emotionally restrained film that interrogates the meaning of dignity in contemporary India. Rather than presenting dignity as a reward earned through hard work, discipline, or loyalty to the state, the film argues that dignity is a basic human right that is systematically denied through institutional apathy. This argument unfolds through the central metaphor of the “journey home,” which operates on two levels: as a literal physical migration during the COVID-19 lockdown and as a symbolic journey toward social acceptance. Through the experiences of Chandan and Shoaib, Homebound reveals that both journeys ultimately fail not because of personal shortcomings, but because the social and political system refuses to accommodate marginalized lives.

At the narrative level, Homebound follows two young men from disadvantaged backgrounds who believe that discipline and merit can secure them a place within the state. As aspiring police constables, Chandan and Shoaib invest their bodies and hopes in institutional processes. The police uniform becomes a powerful symbol of dignity, authority, and belonging. For Chandan, a Dalit, it promises escape from caste-based humiliation; for Shoaib, a Muslim, it promises national acceptance in a society that often treats him with suspicion. Their ambition reflects faith in meritocracy the belief that effort will be rewarded fairly. However, the film gradually dismantles this belief by exposing the structural imbalance of opportunity, where millions compete for a handful of jobs. Dignity, the film suggests, is not withheld due to lack of merit, but because the system is designed to exclude most aspirants.

The first half of the film presents the “journey home” metaphorically. Chandan and Shoaib attempt to move closer to the symbolic home of acceptance into institutions that promise respect and legitimacy. Yet even before the pandemic begins, subtle signs indicate that this home is unreachable. Caste and religious discrimination manifest not through violence but through micro-aggressions: Chandan’s hesitation to claim reservation due to caste shame and Shoaib’s experience of quiet religious othering. These moments show that dignity is already denied in everyday interactions. The state may appear neutral, but society remains deeply unequal, forcing marginalized individuals to erase parts of themselves to survive.

The COVID-19 lockdown marks a dramatic narrative shift, transforming the metaphorical journey into a literal one. When the lockdown is announced, institutions collapse overnight. Jobs disappear, transport is suspended, and support systems vanish. Chandan and Shoaib are forced to walk home along highways, joining thousands of migrant bodies moving through hostile landscapes. This physical journey strips away the illusion of institutional care. The men who believed in the system are abandoned by it. Their movement across roads becomes a stark visual representation of systemic apathy, where survival replaces ambition and endurance replaces hope.

Importantly, the film does not treat the pandemic as a sudden or accidental tragedy. Instead, it presents the lockdown as an exposure of what theorists describe as “slow violence” the gradual, normalized neglect of marginalized communities. The pandemic merely accelerates conditions that already existed: insecurity, invisibility, and disposability. By shifting genre from a drama of aspiration to a survival narrative, Homebound underscores that the failure of dignity is not situational but structural. Equality appears only when everyone is equally abandoned.

The film’s treatment of performance and body language reinforces this argument. Vishal Jethwa’s portrayal of Chandan uses physical withdrawal slouched shoulders, lowered gaze, hesitant speech—to embody internalized caste trauma. In the scene where he is asked his full name, Chandan’s body reacts before his words, revealing how caste oppression is etched into posture and movement. Similarly, Ishaan Khatter’s Shoaib carries simmering anger rather than overt rage. His restrained performance captures the exhaustion of constantly proving belonging. Shoaib’s decision to reject a job abroad and seek a government position in India reflects his desire to claim home rather than flee from it. Yet the film shows that this loyalty is never reciprocated.

The idea of “home” in Homebound is therefore deeply ironic. Home is not a place of comfort or belonging; it is a space that repeatedly rejects its own citizens. Even when Chandan and Shoaib finally reach their village, there is no redemption or restoration. The physical return offers no emotional or social refuge. The journey home ends not in acceptance but in loss, reinforcing the film’s central claim that dignity is denied not only in cities or institutions, but within the very fabric of society.

Cinematic language plays a crucial role in shaping this meaning. Cinematographer Pratik Shah’s use of a warm, grey, and dusty palette during the migration sequences creates what critics describe as an “aesthetic of exhaustion.” Close-ups of feet dragging across asphalt, sweat-streaked faces, and dirt-covered bodies deny the audience visual relief. These images refuse romanticism and force viewers to confront physical vulnerability. Similarly, the minimalist soundscape marked by silence and ambient noise rather than melodramatic music allows suffering to exist without emotional guidance. Tragedy is not amplified; it is observed, mirroring the state’s indifference.

Beyond the narrative, Homebound also exists within a larger ethical and political discourse. The censorship of seemingly innocuous words and dialogues reveals the state’s discomfort with films that highlight social fissures. The controversy surrounding the adaptation claims of plagiarism and exclusion of real-life subjects raises questions about who has the right to tell stories of suffering and under what conditions. These debates reinforce the film’s thematic concern: marginalized lives are often used, represented, and celebrated without being truly included or protected.

The film’s reception further underscores its argument. While Homebound received international acclaim and festival recognition, it struggled commercially in India. This disconnect highlights how serious social cinema is often valued as prestige art rather than mass culture. The market’s inability to sustain such films reflects the same systemic apathy the film critiques where truth is applauded but not supported.

In conclusion, Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound powerfully argues that dignity is not something to be earned through effort, loyalty, or suffering. It is a basic human right that is repeatedly denied by a system indifferent to marginalized lives. Through the dual metaphor of the journey home as both physical migration and failed social inclusion the film exposes the hollowness of institutional promises. Chandan and Shoaib’s journeys end not in belonging but in abandonment, making Homebound a haunting reminder that in an unequal society, home itself can become unreachable.

Thank You