Homebound (2025): A Journey Through Dignity, Despair, and the Divided Nation
An Academic Analysis of Neeraj Ghaywan's Social Realist Masterpiece
This blog is assigned by Dilip Bard sir on movie screening of Home Bound (2025) Neeraj Ghaywan Screenplay: Neeraj Ghaywan, Sumit Roy Based on: A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway by Basharat Pee
- Film Credits: Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
- Screenplay: Neeraj Ghaywan, Sumit Roy
- Executive Producer: Martin Scorsese
- Cast: Ishaan Khatter (Shoaib), Vishal Jethwa (Chandan), Janhvi Kapoor (Sudha Bharti)
- Cinematographer: Pratik Shah
- Music: Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor
- Based on: "A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway" by Basharat Peer (2020, New York Times)
Introduction: Cinema as Social Mirror
In the landscape of contemporary Indian cinema, few films have dared to hold up a mirror as unflinching as Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound (2025). This is not a film that offers comfort or easy answers. Instead, it presents a devastating portrait of two young men Chandan and Shoaib whose dreams of dignity are systematically crushed by the very nation they wish to serve. Adapted from Basharat Peer's 2020 New York Times essay "A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway," Homebound transforms a powerful piece of reportage into a cinematic experience that refuses to look away from India's most uncomfortable truths about caste, religion, and systemic apathy. The film features powerhouse performances from Ishaan Khatter as Shoaib, Vishal Jethwa as Chandan, and Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha Bharti, all brought to life through Pratik Shah's evocative cinematography and the minimalist score by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor. This academic analysis examines how Ghaywan's film operates as both artistic achievement and social document, exploring its treatment of institutional dignity, systemic oppression, and the perpetual displacement of marginalized communities in contemporary India.
Source Material Analysis and Adaptation Politics
The Transformation from Reportage to Fiction
The film is based on Basharat Peer's essay originally titled "Taking Amrit Home," which documented the real-life tragedy of Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub, two migrant textile workers in Surat. Ghaywan's adaptation reimagines these protagonists as Chandan, played by Vishal Jethwa, and Shoaib, played by Ishaan Khatter, who are aspiring police constables rather than textile workers. This narrative transformation is crucial to understanding the film's thematic depth and represents a deliberate artistic choice that fundamentally alters the social commentary embedded in the original reportage. While the real subjects were textile workers whose journey spoke primarily to economic survival and the brutal realities of migrant labor, the fictionalized protagonists are positioned as candidates for the state apparatus itself, which introduces entirely new dimensions of institutional critique and commentary on how marginalized communities seek validation through belonging to structures of power.
The Significance of Professional Identity
Changing the protagonists' pre-lockdown employment from textile workers to aspiring police constables fundamentally alters the film's commentary on "ambition" and "institutional dignity" compared to the original reportage. By positioning Chandan, a Dalit, and Shoaib, a Muslim, as police aspirants, the film emphasizes their desire to escape the "ignominy" of their identities through the power of a uniform, rather than merely seeking a livelihood or economic stability. The police uniform becomes a complex symbol of social mobility a tool that would allow them to "stand tall among people who take issue with their very names," as the film explicitly articulates. This shift transforms the narrative from a story of pure economic survival into a profound examination of how marginalized communities seek validation and dignity through institutional belonging, and how the promise of meritocracy functions as both hope and cruel illusion for those at the bottom of India's entrenched social hierarchies. The uniform represents more than just employment; it symbolizes the possibility of transcending their marginalized identities and gaining the respect and dignity that society has systematically denied them based solely on their caste and religious backgrounds.
Production Context and International Reception
Martin Scorsese's Mentorship and Influence
Martin Scorsese's involvement as Executive Producer significantly influenced the film's production, aesthetic choices, and international reception. Scorsese mentored director Neeraj Ghaywan during script development and editing, watching three different cuts of the film before its final version was completed. Critics note that Scorsese's influence contributed substantially to the film's "realist" tone, ensuring it was "neither dumbed down nor sanitised for westerners," a quality that proved essential to its reception at international festivals. This approach, which maintained the film's uncompromising vision while making it accessible to global audiences, aided its reception at prestigious venues like the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it received standing ovations. The Scorsese mentorship represents more than just celebrity endorsement; it provided Ghaywan with guidance on how to maintain artistic integrity while crafting a film that could communicate across cultural boundaries without diluting its specific critique of Indian social hierarchies.
The Stark Divide: International Acclaim vs. Domestic Failure
The film's trajectory reveals a stark and troubling divide between international critical acclaim and domestic commercial reception. On the international festival circuit, Homebound received standing ovations at both the Cannes Film Festival in 2025 and the Toronto International Film Festival in the same year. It was selected as India's official entry for the Oscars 2026 and subsequently made the Academy Awards shortlist, cementing its place as a work of international cinematic significance. However, the domestic reception tells a dramatically different story. The film received a box office verdict of FLOP, with lifetime collections of approximately ₹4.58 crore, and struggled with limited screens and flawed distribution strategies that prevented it from reaching wider audiences. This disconnect raises critical questions about the consumption of "serious cinema" in the post-pandemic Indian market, the tension between critical prestige and commercial viability, and whether narratives about social marginalization can find sustainable audiences within India's increasingly polarized and entertainment-focused film market. The film's inability to find a substantial domestic audience despite its international recognition speaks to deeper issues about what kind of cinema resonates with Indian viewers and how narratives about caste and religious discrimination are received differently by Western audiences, who may view them as exotic or anthropological subjects, versus domestic audiences, who may find them too uncomfortable or politically charged.
Deconstructing Meritocracy: The Politics of the Uniform
The Examination System as Site of False Hope
The first half of Homebound focuses extensively on Chandan and Shoaib's preparation for the police entrance examination, and this narrative choice serves multiple crucial thematic purposes. The film starkly deconstructs India's meritocratic promise by highlighting the statistical reality that 2.5 million applicants compete for only 3,500 seats a ratio of approximately one job for every 700 applicants. This overwhelming numerical reality exposes the near-impossibility of success for marginalized candidates who lack the social, economic, and educational capital that privileged applicants possess, the systemic inefficiency of recruitment processes that create such impossible odds, and the cruel irony of "equal opportunity" rhetoric in a deeply unequal society where structural disadvantages ensure that equality at the starting line is a fiction. The examination system, supposedly neutral and meritocratic, becomes another site where systemic barriers manifest, ensuring that those who most need the dignity the uniform promises are statistically and structurally least likely to obtain it.
The Uniform as Symbol and Delusion
Chandan and Shoaib view the police uniform as far more than mere employment or professional identity; it represents a potential pathway to dignity, social acceptance, and the possibility of escaping the shame and discrimination that have defined their lives. For these young men, the uniform promises the authority and respect that their names and identities have historically been denied in Indian society. However, the film reveals this belief in fairness and meritocratic achievement to be tragically fragile, systematically undermined by the overwhelming odds against them and the structural inequalities embedded in every stage of the process. The film carefully deconstructs this hope by showing how even the path to obtaining the uniform is itself riddled with the very inequalities it promises to transcend, creating a tragic paradox where the tools meant to achieve dignity are distributed through processes that reinforce existing hierarchies of caste, religion, and class.
Intersectionality: Caste and Religion Through Micro-Aggressions
The Strategy of Depicting Quiet Cruelty
Homebound distinguishes itself from conventional representations of caste and religious discrimination by depicting oppression through "micro-aggressions" rather than overt violence or dramatic confrontations. These moments of "quiet cruelty" cut deeper than physical assault precisely because they reveal how oppression has become normalized, naturalized, and rendered invisible in contemporary Indian society. The film understands that in modern India, discrimination often operates not through spectacular violence but through everyday erasures, subtle exclusions, and the thousand small cuts that teach marginalized people that they don't quite belong. This representational strategy is both politically astute and cinematically effective, as it captures how power operates in contemporary contexts where overt discrimination is legally prohibited but structural inequalities persist through informal mechanisms and interpersonal interactions.
Case Study A: Caste Identity and Internalized Shame
In a pivotal narrative choice that reveals the psychological dimensions of caste oppression, Chandan applies for the police examination under the 'General' category instead of the 'Reserved' category despite being eligible for caste-based reservation as a Dalit. This decision reveals the profound "shame" associated with Dalit identity in contemporary India and the ways that caste discrimination operates not just through external barriers but through internalized oppression. Chandan fears that even if recruited under reservation, he would face judgment, discrimination, and the perpetual questioning of his competence by colleagues and superiors who would attribute his position to quota rather than merit. He would rather compete against statistically impossible odds than carry the stigma of his caste identity into his professional life, believing that obtaining the position through "general merit" might somehow shield him from the discrimination that would otherwise await him. This illustrates how casteism functions not just through external discrimination but through internalized shame the way oppression teaches people to hide their identity, to be complicit in their own erasure, rather than challenge the system that marginalizes them. The film presents this choice without judgment, allowing viewers to understand it as a tragic rational response to an irrational system rather than as personal weakness or false consciousness.
Case Study B: Religious Othering in Corporate Spaces
In a workplace scene that passes almost without comment but carries tremendous symbolic weight, an employee refuses to take a water bottle from Shoaib, who works as a peon in what appears to be a modern corporate office. This interaction is analyzed by critics as a "quiet insult" representing the "quiet cruelty" of caste and religious segregation that persists in supposedly modern corporate spaces that pride themselves on their progressive credentials. The moment speaks volumes about the persistence of untouchability practices in contemporary India, where the ancient prohibition on contact with polluted bodies has been translated into modern contexts; the intersection of class and religious identity, where Shoaib's position as both Muslim and low-level employee compounds his marginalization; and the normalization of discriminatory behavior in "modern" settings, where discrimination has learned to operate through subtle gestures rather than explicit prohibitions. The film understands that violence isn't always loud or spectacular; sometimes, it's the refusal to touch what someone has touched, the subtle erasure of someone's humanity through everyday interactions that collectively communicate their exclusion from full social membership. The scene's power lies precisely in its ordinariness this is not presented as an exceptional moment of cruelty but as a routine occurrence that both Shoaib and the audience understand happens constantly.
The Pandemic as Narrative Device and Metaphor
Exposure of Pre-Existing "Slow Violence"
Critics have debated whether the introduction of the COVID-19 lockdown in the second half of the film represents a "convenient twist" that allows the narrative to shift into survival thriller mode or whether it constitutes an organic narrative development that emerges inevitably from the film's social analysis. The film positions the pandemic decisively not as a new crisis but as an exposure of pre-existing "slow violence" the term borrowed from Rob Nixon's influential work on environmental and social harm that occurs gradually and invisibly. The lockdown transforms the film generically from a drama of ambition and institutional aspiration to a survival thriller focused on the physical ordeal of migration, but this tonal shift is thematically justified rather than opportunistic. The lack of resources during the pandemic migration was merely an escalation and visible manifestation of conditions the protagonists already lived in as marginalized workers; the indifference of authorities during the lockdown simply mirrored with greater intensity their everyday invisibility and exclusion from state protection; and the physical journey home became a literal manifestation of the metaphorical displacement they had always experienced in a nation that simultaneously claims them as citizens while denying them dignity.
Genre Transformation as Social Commentary
The pandemic didn't create the suffering that Chandan and Shoaib experience; it merely made visible and undeniable the systemic apathy that had always existed but was previously obscured by the routines of normal life and the ideological narratives of national belonging and meritocratic opportunity. As one critic insightfully noted, the film reveals that "equality appears only in conditions where everyone is equally abandoned" a devastating observation that the pandemic, by reducing everyone to bare biological life subject to viral threat, paradoxically creates a kind of equality precisely by stripping away the protections and privileges that normally shield some citizens while leaving others exposed. The journey that Chandan and Shoaib undertake during the lockdown walking hundreds of kilometers without resources, facing indifferent authorities, struggling for basic survival is not fundamentally different in kind from the journey they were already on in the first half of the film. Both journeys involve seeking dignity in systems designed to deny it, both involve the exhaustion of bodies and spirits under the weight of structural indifference, and both reveal the conditional and precarious nature of their citizenship and belonging.
Somatic Performance and Embodied Trauma
Vishal Jethwa's Physicality as Political Statement
Reviewers have extensively noted actor Vishal Jethwa's sophisticated use of physicality to portray the Dalit experience in his performance as Chandan. His acting has been described in terms of "somatic intelligence" a concept from performance studies that refers to the way the body remembers, processes, and communicates trauma independently of conscious thought or verbal articulation. Jethwa's body literally tells the story of caste oppression through gesture, posture, and movement. Most notably, critics observed that Jethwa physically "shrinks" during interactions with authority figures, making himself smaller, reducing his physical presence, and occupying less space in ways that embody the internalized trauma of caste oppression. This is not merely skilled acting but a form of embodied political analysis that demonstrates how caste discrimination operates at the level of the body itself, shaping how people move through space, how they hold themselves, and how they physically manifest the power relations that structure their social world.
The Opening Scene: When Names Carry Histories
The performance strategy is most powerfully demonstrated in the opening scene where Chandan is asked his full name during what appears to be an official interaction. His hesitation, the way his body tenses, and his visible discomfort communicate multiple layers of meaning simultaneously. First, they reveal the power dynamic inherent in caste hierarchies, where the simple act of stating one's name becomes an admission of identity that invites judgment and positions oneself within a centuries-old hierarchy of purity and pollution. Second, they demonstrate the character's knowledge, gained through lifetime experience, that revealing his identity invites judgment, discrimination, and a fundamental shift in how he will be perceived and treated. Third, they illustrate the embodied nature of discrimination—how oppression is written into the very posture and movement of the body, how it becomes inscribed in muscle memory and physical habit. This performance strategy illustrates that caste discrimination isn't just ideological or attitudinal; it's physical and corporeal, affecting how people literally carry themselves in the world, how much space they feel entitled to occupy, and how they physically manifest the subordination that society demands of them.
The Othered Citizen and the Paradox of Belonging
Ishaan Khatter's Portrayal of Controlled Rage
Ishaan Khatter's portrayal of Shoaib has been characterized by critics as embodying "simmering angst" a controlled but palpable anger that threatens constantly to overflow but is kept in check by the character's understanding that expressions of Muslim rage are dangerous and immediately coded as threatening in contemporary India's political climate. This is not the explosive anger of dramatic confrontation but the accumulated rage of someone who has spent a lifetime swallowing insults, accepting second-class treatment, and negotiating the perpetual gap between formal citizenship and substantive belonging. Khatter's performance captures the exhausting emotional labor of minority existence, where one must constantly manage one's affect, police one's expressions, and perform gratitude and loyalty to a nation that treats one's very presence as suspect.
The Dubai Decision: Choosing an Unwelcoming Home
Shoaib's character arc from rejecting a lucrative job in Dubai to seeking a government position in India reflects the complex, often painful relationship between minority communities and the concept of "home" in the Indian nation-state. This narrative choice raises thematic questions that cut to the heart of minoritarian experience: Where do you belong when home doesn't fully accept you? What does it mean to seek validation from a nation that constantly "others" you, that treats your loyalty as perpetually questionable, and that positions your religious identity as incompatible with true national belonging? How do minorities navigate the paradox of loving a homeland that treats them with suspicion, that demands they prove their patriotism in ways never demanded of majority community members, and that frames their very existence as a political problem to be managed? The decision to reject the Dubai opportunity is particularly significant because it represents an active choice to stay and fight for belonging rather than accept the easier path of economic migration. Shoaib is not simply trapped in India by lack of options; he is actively choosing to seek acceptance in a nation that has consistently marginalized him, making this a profound expression of the desire to belong and to claim one's rightful place in a homeland despite its rejection. The film treats this choice with the complexity it deserves—neither romanticizing it as noble sacrifice nor dismissing it as naive foolishness, but presenting it as the painful negotiation that minority citizens must constantly undertake between the desire for home and the reality of perpetual othering.
Gendered Perspectives and Educational Privilege
The Critical Debate Over Sudha Bharti's Character
The role of Sudha Bharti, played by Janhvi Kapoor, has generated significant critical debate about representation, narrative function, and the film's treatment of gender. Some critics argue she functions primarily as a "narrative device" rather than a fully realized character with her own meaningful arc, psychological depth, and autonomous desires. According to this critique, Sudha exists primarily to illuminate aspects of the male protagonists' experiences rather than as a subject in her own right, and her presence serves plot functions rather than representing a genuine engagement with how caste and class operate differently for women. However, other critics contend she represents a necessary counterpoint of "educational empowerment and privilege," illustrating that education, which is often presented as a great equalizer in Indian society, actually functions as a pathway to dignity that remains harder for the male protagonists to access due to their intersecting marginalized identities of caste and religion compounded by class disadvantage. This debate itself reveals important questions about representation that extend beyond this particular film: How do we balance the need for complex female characters with a film's primary focus on caste and religious marginalization among men? Can a character serve narrative and thematic functions while still being evaluated as a fully realized person? What are the politics of attention in films that address multiple axes of oppression?
Education as Stratified Privilege
Sudha's character, regardless of which critical interpretation one accepts, serves an important analytical function in highlighting how privilege operates along multiple intersecting axes in contemporary India. Her educational background and presumably upper-caste status afford her opportunities, social mobility, and dignities that remain structurally out of reach for Chandan and Shoaib despite their equal or greater efforts, intelligence, and commitment. The film suggests that education, while ideologically presented as a great equalizer that can lift anyone out of disadvantage through individual merit, remains deeply stratified by caste, class, and religion in ways that make this meritocratic promise largely illusory for the marginalized. Those who have the social and economic capital to access quality education from childhood, who grow up in environments where educational achievement is normalized and supported, and who benefit from social networks that translate educational credentials into actual opportunities can use education as a pathway to dignity and advancement. Meanwhile, those without such capital find even their educational achievements devalued, rendered suspect, or made inaccessible by systemic barriers that operate at every stage from primary schooling through professional employment.
Visual Language and the Aesthetic of Exhaustion
Pratik Shah's Cinematographic Strategy
Cinematographer Pratik Shah employs a distinctive visual strategy throughout Homebound that has been characterized by critics as creating an "aesthetic of exhaustion." The film is shot using a "warm, grey, and dusty" palette that reflects both physical and emotional fatigue, creating a visual environment that feels perpetually tired, drained of vitality, and suffused with the accumulated weight of endurance. During the highway migration sequences that dominate the second half of the film, Shah makes specific framing choices that fundamentally shape how audiences experience the journey. The camera often stays close to the ground through low camera angles that emphasize the earth, the road surface, and the physical labor of walking. There is an intimate focus on close-ups of "feet, dirt, and sweat" that forces viewers to attend to the materiality of bodies under duress rather than allowing them to abstract the journey into metaphor or symbol. The visual compositions confine characters within their harsh circumstances through framing that traps them within the edges of the screen, that shows them dwarfed by landscapes they cannot escape, and that refuses the expansive vistas that might suggest freedom or possibility.
Refusing to Romanticize Suffering
This visual strategy creates what critics have termed an "aesthetic of exhaustion"—a deliberate refusal to romanticize poverty, suffering, or the resilience of the oppressed. The film visually traps the characters within their circumstances rather than offering inspirational or uplifting imagery that might suggest their suffering is meaningful, ennobling, or redemptive. There are no beautiful sunsets that frame their journey as epic or heroic, no soaring crane shots that suggest transcendence or escape, and no visual poetry that aestheticizes their pain. These aesthetic choices ensure the audience experiences the grinding, relentless nature of the protagonists' journey without the comfort of finding it beautiful or inspiring. There is no escape offered by the cinematography, no visual relief from the accumulated weight of walking, no moment where the camera suggests that this suffering serves some higher purpose or will lead to redemption. Instead, there is only the endless rhythm of walking, the accumulating weight of each kilometer, and the visual insistence that we attend to bodies being broken down by a journey they should never have been forced to undertake. This refusal of romantic or redemptive visual language represents a crucial ethical stance: to witness suffering without beautifying it, to represent injustice without suggesting it serves some hidden purpose, and to show exhaustion as exhaustion rather than as the path to enlightenment or transformation.
Minimalist Soundscape as Resistance to Melodrama
Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor's Compositional Philosophy
The background score by composers Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor is consistently described by critics and reviewers as "minimalist" and "restrained," qualities that fundamentally distinguish Homebound from conventional Bollywood cinematic practices. Unlike traditional Hindi film melodramas that use music to dictate emotional responses, to cue audience reactions, and to ensure that viewers know exactly what to feel at every moment, the score for Homebound does not tell the audience how to feel. Instead, the minimalist approach allows ambient sounds to carry emotional weight the sounds of footsteps, breathing, traffic, wind, and the environmental noise of the spaces the characters move through become the primary sonic texture. Silence is used to communicate isolation and exhaustion, with long stretches where music is completely absent and we hear only the sounds of bodies moving through space and time. Raw performances are allowed to convey tragedy without musical manipulation or emotional underlining that would direct our sympathies or package the suffering into consumable emotional experiences.
Trust in Audience and Commitment to Realism
This minimalist approach differs fundamentally from conventional Hindi cinema's use of music as constant emotional commentary and guidance. By refusing to tell audiences how to feel through swelling orchestration, melodic cues, or rhythmic emphasis, the film treats viewers as capable of emotional engagement without orchestrated manipulation or hand-holding. The absence of swelling strings during moments of crisis or triumph, the restraint in using music to underline emotional beats or signal turning points, and the willingness to let scenes play out in silence or with only ambient sound—these choices reflect both a trust in the audience's emotional intelligence and a commitment to realism that resists the pleasures of melodramatic inflation. This sonic restraint also serves crucial thematic functions within the film's broader aesthetic and political project. In a film about voices that are systematically unheard, about experiences that are rendered invisible, and about lives that are treated as disposable, the use of silence and ambient sound makes space for these marginalized realities to be witnessed without the mediation of musical interpretation. The sounds we hear are the sounds of lived experience footsteps on highways, labored breathing during exhaustion, the ambient noise of cities and rural spaces rather than the imposed emotional architecture of a traditional score. This approach aligns with the film's overall aesthetic project of presenting marginalized lives without romanticization or melodramatic inflation, insisting that these lives and their tragedies are significant enough without musical enhancement, that the reality itself when presented honestly is more powerful than any emotional manipulation could achieve.
Censorship and State Anxiety About Social Truth
The CBFC's Interventions and Their Meaning
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) ordered 11 cuts totaling 77 seconds from Homebound, including two particularly revealing interventions: muting the word "Gyan" and removing dialogue about "Aloo gobhi." While these specific cuts might initially seem trivial, arbitrary, or even absurd to observers unfamiliar with the politics of Indian film censorship, they actually reflect profound state anxiety regarding films that highlight social fissures, caste discrimination, and religious marginalization. The censorship targets are not scenes of explicit violence, sexual content, or obscenity but rather moments that make visible the everyday operations of caste and religious discrimination, that name and specify the mechanisms through which dignity is denied, and that refuse to present Indian society as harmonious or successfully post-caste. The seemingly minor nature of what is cut reveals that the censorship is not about protecting audiences from offensive content but about managing representations of social reality that might contradict official narratives of national unity, progress, and equal citizenship.
Double Standards and Political Control
Actor Ishaan Khattar publicly criticized what he termed the "double standards" applied to social films compared to commercial entertainers, making several crucial observations about how censorship operates politically rather than morally. He noted that films with social perspectives, that take clear positions on caste and religious discrimination, and that challenge dominant narratives face far more scrutiny than commercial entertainers that may contain far more objectionable content in terms of violence, misogyny, or communal stereotyping. Content that challenges social hierarchies and makes visible the operations of power is treated as inherently more dangerous than content that reinforces existing hierarchies or simply provides escapist entertainment. The censorship process reveals deep official discomfort with representations of caste and religious discrimination that present these as systemic rather than individual problems, that show them as ongoing rather than historical, and that refuse the consoling narrative that India has successfully overcome these divisions. This pattern of censorship raises fundamental questions about which narratives are deemed acceptable for public consumption, which truths about Indian society are considered too destabilizing or divisive to be widely seen, and how state power operates through cultural regulation to manage representations of social reality.
Ethics of Adaptation: Plagiarism and Exploitation
The Plagiarism Lawsuit and Contested Authorship
In December 2025, Homebound became embroiled in serious legal controversy when author Puja Changoiwala filed a lawsuit claiming the film plagiarized her novel. Changoiwala alleges that the film "unlawfully copies" her creative work, appropriating not just general themes or broad narrative structures but specific plot points, character developments, and creative innovations that she argues constitute her original intellectual property. Dharma Productions, the film's production company, has called these plagiarism claims "baseless and unfounded," denying any unauthorized use of Changoiwala's work and arguing that the film is based exclusively on Basharat Peer's published essay with all appropriate permissions and credits. This dispute raises complex questions about authorship, creative ownership, and the ethics of adaptation when multiple writers may be working with similar source materials or real-life events. It also reveals the contested terrain of who gets to tell stories about marginalization, who receives credit and compensation for that storytelling, and how the film industry's power structures may privilege certain voices while marginalizing others.
The Family's Complaint: Compensation and Consent
More troubling from an ethical standpoint than the plagiarism lawsuit are the revelations from the family of the real Amrit Kumar, whose death during the pandemic migration forms the factual basis for the film's narrative. The family revealed several deeply problematic aspects of their treatment by the filmmakers: they were given only ₹10,000 initially as compensation for the use of their family member's story and image, an amount that seems insultingly inadequate given the film's budget and the immense profit potential of an Oscar-contending film; they were completely unaware of the film's release, suggesting they were not kept informed about the project's development despite being central stakeholders in the story being told; and they felt fundamentally excluded from a project based on their family member's tragedy, treated as sources to be mined for authentic detail rather than as participants in a collaborative process of representation. These revelations raise profound ethical questions that extend far beyond this particular case. What responsibility do filmmakers have to the real people whose stories they adapt, especially when those people are economically and socially marginalized? Does "raising awareness" about social injustice justify the alleged exclusion and minimal compensation of the original subjects whose suffering provides the raw material for that awareness? Are filmmakers truly "standing by the lives they bring to screen," as some defenders of socially conscious cinema argue, or are they exploiting those lives for cinematic acclaim, festival recognition, and career advancement while leaving the actual subjects behind?
Who Owns Stories of Suffering?
These controversies expose fundamental tensions in the political economy of socially conscious art. While the film claims to advocate for dignity, to represent the experiences of those systematically denied voice and visibility, and to make visible the operations of systemic oppression, the alleged treatment of its real-life inspirations raises serious questions about whether that dignity extends beyond the screen into the actual material relationships of production. If the family of Amrit Kumar was compensated with only ₹10,000 while the film goes on to achieve international festival acclaim, Oscar consideration, and substantial cultural capital for its creators, what does this say about the film's actual relationship to the lives it purports to honor? This is not to invalidate the film's artistic achievements or its value as social critique, but rather to insist that we maintain a critical awareness of the gap between representational politics on screen and material politics off screen. The question of who owns stories of suffering, who has the right to tell them, who profits from their telling, and who gets left behind in that process remains unresolved and perhaps irresolvable within current structures of film production and distribution.
Commercial Viability and the Future of Social Cinema
Karan Johar's Statement and Industry Logic
Producer Karan Johar made a revealing and widely discussed statement that he might not make "unprofitable" films like Homebound again due to business mandates and the economic pressures of running a major production company. This statement, while disappointing to advocates of socially conscious cinema, reflects the hard economic realities of film production within capitalist markets. Despite Homebound receiving standing ovations at both Cannes and TIFF, being selected as India's official entry for the Oscars 2026, achieving Academy Award shortlist placement, and garnering critical acclaim from both international and domestic film critics, the film was a commercial failure with lifetime collections of approximately ₹4.58 crore against what was presumably a significantly higher production and marketing budget. The film struggled with flawed distribution strategies, limited theatrical screens willing to show it, and apparent audience resistance to its challenging content and social critique. Johar's statement reflects his position as both an individual with artistic aspirations and a business executive responsible to investors, shareholders, and the commercial logic of the entertainment industry.
The Paradox of Critical Success and Commercial Failure
The tension between Homebound's critical prestige and commercial failure reveals several interconnected problems facing social realist cinema in contemporary India. First, there is a fundamental disconnect between critical acclaim, especially international critical acclaim, and domestic commercial success. The audiences and institutions that award films at Cannes, that select national Oscar entries, and that generate critical discourse are not the same audiences that determine box office success in India's theatrical markets. Second, there is the ongoing challenge of distributing social realist cinema in mainstream markets dominated by multiplexes that prefer commercially safe content, audiences that increasingly seek escapist entertainment rather than challenging social critique, and distribution networks that channel resources toward proven commercial formulas. Third, there is evidence of a post-pandemic shift in audience preferences toward escapist entertainment, toward films that provide relief from social anxiety rather than intensifying it, and toward content that affirms rather than challenges existing social arrangements. Fourth, there is the fundamental difficulty of sustaining artistic filmmaking within commercial production structures that ultimately answer to profit imperatives regardless of the artistic commitments of individual producers or directors.
Implications for the Future of Socially Conscious Cinema
The broader industry implication of Homebound's commercial failure is deeply troubling for those committed to socially conscious cinema. If even an Oscar-shortlisted film with international festival acclaim, prominent star cast, and the backing of a major production house cannot find commercial success, what future exists for socially conscious cinema within India's mainstream industry? The pessimistic reading suggests that social realist films will be increasingly ghettoized into festival circuits, art house theaters serving elite audiences, and streaming platforms where they can find niche viewers without requiring the mass audiences necessary for theatrical profitability. The optimistic reading might suggest that the problem is not inherent to social cinema but specific to distribution strategies, marketing approaches, and the need to build audiences for this kind of work through sustained commitment rather than expecting immediate commercial returns. The realistic reading probably lies somewhere between these poles, acknowledging that social cinema will always face structural disadvantages in commercial markets while insisting that its production remains both artistically valuable and politically necessary regardless of profitability.
Dignity as a Basic Right Denied: The Film's Central Argument
The Three Dimensions of the Journey Home
Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound suggests that dignity is not a reward to be earned through merit, achievement, or proper behavior, but rather a basic human right that is systematically denied by systemic apathy, structural violence, and the active operations of caste and religious discrimination. The film develops this argument through the complex metaphor of the "Journey Home," which must be understood not merely as the physical migration during the COVID-19 lockdown but as the protagonists' failed attempt across multiple registers to find acceptance, belonging, and dignity within the social fabric of India. This journey operates on three interconnected dimensions that together constitute the film's political and emotional architecture.
The first dimension is the metaphorical journey depicted primarily in the first half of the film. This involves the protagonists' pursuit of upward mobility through police entrance examinations, representing their belief that institutional achievement can provide escape from marginalization. It encompasses their attempt to strip away the shame of their caste and religious identities through professional accomplishment and the authority of the uniform. It is grounded in a belief, ultimately revealed as tragically misplaced, in meritocracy as a viable pathway to dignity for those born into marginalized positions.
The second dimension is the physical journey that dominates the second half following the COVID-19 lockdown. This involves forced migration when the state fails to provide any support or protection during the pandemic crisis. It consists of walking hundreds of kilometers without adequate resources, food, water, or rest. It transforms the body itself into the primary site of suffering and exhaustion, making visible and material the violence that was previously structural and abstract.
The third dimension is the existential journey that runs throughout the entire film as its underlying current. This involves the perpetual search for a "home" in both the national and local sense that will accept them as full citizens and community members. It leads to the devastating realization that both the Indian nation-state and their village of origin offer no sanctuary, dignity, or genuine belonging. It culminates in the understanding that their citizenship is fundamentally conditional, contingent on their acceptance of subordination and their performance of gratitude for whatever minimal dignity they are occasionally granted.
The Visual Motif of Shrinking Bodies
Throughout Homebound, the recurring visual motif of "shrinking" bodies in the face of authority serves as a powerful embodiment of the film's political analysis. This motif underscores several interconnected insights. First, it demonstrates that citizenship, for the marginalized in India, is always conditional rather than guaranteed, always subject to revocation or suspension based on whether they properly perform deference and subordination. Second, it shows that power relations are not just abstract social structures but are literally embodied in posture, gesture, and movement, inscribed into muscle memory and habitual body practices. Third, it reveals that the internalization of oppression manifests physically in how people carry themselves, how much space they feel entitled to occupy, and how they physically enact the hierarchies that structure their social world. The protagonists' failure to find acceptance, to secure dignity, or to achieve the belonging they seek is presented not as a personal failure resulting from their inadequate effort or insufficient merit, but as a systemic failure built into the social fabric of India. The rigid structures of caste and religious hierarchy remain fundamentally incompatible with the protagonists' aspirations for basic human dignity, ensuring that their journey toward home and belonging is structurally doomed regardless of their individual efforts or achievements.
The Film's Refusal of Consolation
As critics have extensively noted, Homebound refuses to offer false hope, redemptive endings, or the narrative consolations typically provided by both commercial cinema and even much social realist cinema. Instead, the film insists on a harder, more uncompromising truth: "equality appears only in conditions where everyone is equally abandoned." This is not nihilism or despair for its own sake but rather an insistence on honesty about social realities that are ordinarily obscured by ideological narratives of progress, national unity, and meritocratic opportunity. The pandemic didn't create the inequality, abandonment, and systemic violence that Chandan and Shoaib experience; it exposed and intensified conditions that already existed. Suffering, the film insists, doesn't ennoble those who endure it, doesn't make them better people or provide them spiritual growth; it simply exhausts them, breaks down their bodies, and reveals the brutality of systems that demand such suffering as the price of bare survival. The journey home, in all its dimensions, revealed that home itself was an illusion—a promise made by the nation-state but never intended to be kept for those marked as disposable by caste and religious identity.
Academic Significance and Cultural Impact
Why Homebound Matters to Film Studies
Homebound makes significant contributions to multiple areas of film studies and provides valuable case material for academic analysis. In adaptation studies, the film demonstrates how fictionalization can actually deepen rather than dilute journalistic truth, showing that the move from reportage to dramatic narrative can provide opportunities for psychological depth, symbolic resonance, and emotional engagement that complement rather than compromise factual accuracy. In performance theory, the film provides compelling case studies in somatic performance and embodied trauma, particularly through Vishal Jethwa's work, demonstrating how bodies can serve as texts that communicate histories of oppression independently of dialogue or explicit narrative. In cinematography and visual studies, the film illustrates what critics have termed the "aesthetic of exhaustion" as a deliberate counter to the "poverty porn" that often characterizes representations of marginalized communities, showing how visual strategies can refuse romanticization while maintaining aesthetic rigor. In sound studies, the film exemplifies minimalist scoring as a form of resistance to melodramatic manipulation, demonstrating how restraint in musical commentary can serve both ethical and aesthetic purposes.
Why Homebound Matters to Sociology
From a sociological perspective, Homebound makes important contributions to understanding contemporary Indian society. In caste studies, the film documents the crucial shift from overt violence to micro-aggressions as the primary mode through which caste discrimination operates in contemporary urban contexts where older forms of explicit untouchability have become legally prohibited and socially stigmatized. In research on religious marginalization, the film explores the systematic "othering" of minority communities, particularly Muslims, and the ways that religious identity intersects with class and regional identity to produce particular forms of vulnerability and exclusion. In migration studies, the film contextualizes pandemic migration within much longer histories of displacement, showing how COVID-19 revealed and intensified patterns of internal migration, labor exploitation, and state abandonment that long preceded the virus. In institutional critique, the film examines how state institutions like the police force, the examination system, and relief apparatus simultaneously promise dignity, advancement, and protection while systematically denying these to marginalized communities.
The Question of Legacy and Cultural Significance
Whether Homebound ultimately succeeds in its Oscar campaign or fades from public memory and discussion, its existence matters and will continue to matter for several reasons. It stands as proof that Indian cinema can engage with the nation's deepest contradictions, most uncomfortable truths, and most profound social failures without flinching or softening the critique. It provides evidence that realism, social commitment, and aesthetic rigor needn't be sacrificed for accessibility or commercial appeal, that serious cinema about serious subjects can achieve both artistic excellence and cultural impact. It offers demonstration that stories of the marginalized deserve the same level of craft, care, technical excellence, and creative ambition that is routinely lavished on stories of the privileged. It serves as a reminder that cinema can function as a tool for bearing witness to lives and experiences that are ordinarily rendered invisible, that representation matters politically and not just aesthetically, and that the camera's attention to those whom society treats as disposable constitutes a form of political intervention.
Conclusion: The Journey That Reveals Home's Absence
For Chandan and Shoaib the fictional protagonists and for the real Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub whose tragedy inspired this fiction, the journey home revealed that home itself was the illusion, the false promise, the ideological mirage that sustained them through conditions that should have been unbearable. The film asks not the sentimental question of whether its protagonists can reach home, can achieve the belonging they seek, or can find the dignity they pursue, but rather the much harder and more radical question of whether home was ever truly theirs to reach in the first place. In a nation where dignity is conditional and contingent, where names carry the accumulated weight of centuries of discrimination and violence, where uniforms promise belonging and respect but the systems that distribute those uniforms ensure the exclusion of the very people who most need them, the question of "home" becomes existential rather than merely geographical.
What remains after the film ends is its insistence that we as viewers must bear witness to lives ordinarily rendered invisible by the operations of power and the distribution of social attention. We must remember that dignity is owed and not earned, that it is a basic human right rather than a reward for proper behavior or meritocratic achievement. We must recognize that systemic failures are not natural disasters, unfortunate accidents, or the inevitable results of social complexity, but rather political choices embedded in the structures we collectively maintain and reproduce. Homebound is not easy to watch, nor should it be its difficulty, its refusal of comfort and consolation, is central to its ethical and political project. The film's power lies in its refusal to comfort viewers with redemptive narratives, its insistence on showing rather than telling, and its faith that audiences can handle complexity, ambiguity, and unresolved tension without requiring melodramatic inflation or false closure.
In the end, Homebound is cinema that demands something from us not just our attention during its runtime but our ongoing reckoning with the uncomfortable truths about Indian society that it refuses to look away from. It demands that we ask what kind of nation produces such journeys, what kind of citizenship is always conditional, and what kind of home continuously fails those who seek belonging within it. These are not questions that the film can answer, nor should it attempt to its task is to pose them with sufficient force, clarity, and emotional resonance that they cannot be easily dismissed or forgotten. Whether measured by box office returns or Oscar victories, Homebound succeeds in that fundamental task of bearing witness to systemic abandonment and insisting that we cannot turn away.
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