'Homebound' Review: Neeraj Ghaywan Holds A Mirror We Cannot Look Away From

When was the last time someone asked your name? Not your IG handle, not the one scribbled on your office ID, but your real name, the one people probe to place you in the caste–religion matrix of this country. My question might sound odd to some: haven’t we moved on from the caste system? Didn’t our history books lock its brutality into the past tense? The reality, though, couldn’t be further away. For Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, this is no ancient story; it’s a mirror, sharp-edged and impossible to look into for too long.

Some of us live in the cocoon of privilege, able to move through life beyond tick boxes. But what about those who can’t? Homebound forces us to sit with that question, and with another one just as piercing: how far will you go for your friends? We all promise to stand tall for them, but when caste, faith, and poverty are set against you — when the world demands a higher price for loyalty — what then?

The Plot and The Inspiration

The film didn't just create massive buzz at the Cannes and Toronto Film Festival; it's also India's official entry to the Oscars. Set against the dusty streets and narrow lanes of a small North Indian town, Homebound traces the intertwined lives of two young men whose dreams are both ordinary and extraordinary in a society that often refuses them. Chandan Kumar Valmiki (Vishal Jethwa), a Dalit boy, carries the weight of a caste that seeks to confine him at every turn, yet he nurtures a fierce determination to rise above it.

Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter), a Muslim son, is tethered by duty, caring for his ailing parents while yearning for a life beyond the limitations imposed on him. For them, the police uniform represents more than just a job: it is an escape route, a badge of dignity, and perhaps the only armour against a world that constantly reduces them to their identities.

Inspired by Basharat Peer’s 2020 New York Times essay, Taking Amrit Home, which recounted a young man carrying his unconscious friend across hundreds of kilometres during the lockdown, Neeraj Ghaywan, alongside co-writers Varun Grover and Shreedhar Dubey, turns a journalistic story into a cinematic heartbeat. The film’s story is woven to not only depict events, but it also reverberates with emotion, leaving audiences hollow and shaken, unwilling to look away. Every frame pulses with the tension between hope and reality, desire and restraint, freedom and the invisible chains of society.

Caste, Faith, and the Democracy of Oppression

What makes Homebound so piercing is its unflinching gaze at the everyday fractures of identity. Chandan, outside his home, must hide his caste, fearing the casual cruelties of a society that judges him before it sees him. At home, he is allowed certain patriarchal privileges denied to his sister Vaishali, who is forced into labour while he pursues education, the very opportunity he enjoys, becoming a quiet testament to structural inequality. Shoaib, meanwhile, bears a different yet no less suffocating weight: the constant reminder of his Muslim identity, the suspicion it invites, and the unrelenting responsibility for his parents’ health.

If you look closer, their friendship is a fragile rebellion. Chandan stands up for Shoaib, Shoaib protects Chandan, and together they carve a small, luminous space where love, loyalty, and laughter transcend labels. Shared Biryani plates, playful in-jokes, and the joy of everyday life create moments of peace amidst the suffocating realities of caste and religion. Yet Ghaywan does not sentimentalise these bonds; he uses them to illuminate a cruel truth: oppression is never equal. It is layered, intersectional, and often invisible to those it does not touch. 

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Cinematography and Craft

Pratik Shah’s cinematography is extraordinary in its quietness. The camera never intrudes; it observes. Long, lingering shots of cracked heels, empty roads, and dimly lit rooms evoke a sense of confinement. The matte finish gives the visuals a lived-in texture — dusty, suffocating, unvarnished. The sound design works almost like memory: faint echoes of trains, the hum of a deserted street, the sting of silence louder than words.

Every technical choice, Nitin Baid’s editing, Khyatee Kanchan’s production design, Rohit Chaturvedi’s costumes, exists not to beautify but to witness. The background score by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor is so unobtrusive you almost miss it, yet it crawls under your skin, heightening the ache.

The Haunting Shadow of Covid

COVID may no longer haunt the headlines, but for those who lost everything, it is not over. It never will be. Homebound revisits the early lockdown not as spectacle but as scar. Chandan and Shoaib, separated from their families, embark on an impossible journey back home. On screen, the images feel like déjà vu — migrants walking barefoot under a punishing sun, mothers feeding children with nothing but water, highways becoming graveyards of ambition.

The genius of the film is that it doesn’t reduce the pandemic to tragedy or poverty porn. Instead, it frames it as what it was: an assault on the poor, a violence of neglect by higher ends. A reminder that you will never look at news headlines as numbers, and start seeing them as people.

Why the Censor Board Needs to Let Films Breathe

That Homebound even exists in Indian theatres feels miraculous. We know films on caste and Islamophobia often get dismissed as “agenda-driven” or silenced by endless cuts. Here too, you sense the censorship — edges softened, subplots pared back, details of systemic violence shaded over. And yet, what bleeds through is enough to bruise us.

This raises the question: why are we so afraid of the truth? Films like this give voice to those rendered invisible. The censor board, instead of trimming their edges, needs to allow them to breathe, to ache, to question. Otherwise, the cinema becomes nothing but decoration.

Performances That Leave You Shattered

The performances are Homebound’s beating heart. Ishaan Khatter delivers the best role of his career, restrained, magnetic, utterly lived-in. You forget he is acting. His Shoaib is tender, protective, but weathered by constant suspicion. It’s a performance that shifts him firmly into the league of the finest actors of his generation.

Vishal Jethwa is remarkable as Chandan, raw yet delicate, carrying guilt and resilience in equal measure. His ability to underplay grief, to show restraint instead of theatrics, makes his portrayal unforgettable. Shalini Vatsa, as Chandan’s mother, is the kind of performer who can move you with a single glance. And in a small but poignant role, Janhvi Kapoor is quietly effective.

Why It Demands the Big Screen

This is not a film to half-watch on a laptop between emails and pauses. In a theatre, the silences are louder, the shadows deeper, the tears heavier.

You hear someone sob in the row behind you. You feel the eerie stillness when the credits roll and no one moves. You realise how many thoughts you’ve been running from. On OTT, you might admire the craft, even praise the performances, but the message won’t burn through.

A Nation Held to Account

Ghaywan’s second feature arrives ten years after Masaan, and it was worth the wait. If Masaan was a poetic elegy, Homebound is a gut punch — a cathartic, painful reminder of how fragile dignity is in this country. That it is India’s official Oscar entry, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer, feels almost poetic justice: a story born from our fractures, carried onto a global stage.

But beyond awards or accolades, this is a film we need because it dares to ask: when did we stop feeling someone else’s pain? In Chandan and Shoaib, we see not just two boys, but an entire generation bruised by systems meant to uplift them. We see dreams denied not because of ability, but because of birth.

When I walked out of the theatre, all I could think of was one line from the film: “Sach bolte hain toh sabse dur ho jaate hain, aur jhooth bolte hain toh khud se.” (Tell the truth, and you’re alienated from the world. Tell a lie, and you’re alienated from yourself.)

Homebound leaves you with questions, anger, and perhaps, if you let it, a little more empathy. And in times like these, maybe that’s the most radical thing a film can do. Keep your tissue box close. And never take your privilege for granted.

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