Review: Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound Is Astoundingly Human in the Face of Caste and Religion
An emotional knockout, the film a week before its theatrical release has become India’s official entry for Oscars
In the 1900s, a six-word story misattributed to Ernest Hemingway appeared in a newspaper: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Though small in size, it evokes a world of loss, longing, and unspoken pain.
We often turn to metaphors of shoes when talking about empathy or inheritance “being in someone else’s shoes” or “the shoe on the other foot.” Homebound, Neeraj Ghaywan’s second feature after Masaan, invites us to do just that: to step into the lives of its characters and feel the weight they carry, the dreams they chase, and the quiet dignity with which they move through a fractured world.
Starring Vishal Jethwa as Chandan Kumar, Ishaan Khatter as Shoaib Mohammed Ali, and Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha Bharti, the film has garnered acclaim since its debut at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and is now India’s official entry for the Best International Feature at the 2026 Academy Awards.
The 2-hour-coming-of-age film that illustrates friendship and resilience at the wake of ambition and socio-political reality for the three leads, is rooted in the article published in The New York Times by journalist Basharat Peer, a Kashmiri journalist, script writer, and author.
“I saw this photo in May, as it was traveling across Indian social media. News stories filled in some of the details: It was taken on May 15 on the outskirts of Kolaras, a small town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The two young men were childhood friends: Mohammad Saiyub, a 22-year-old Muslim, and Amrit Kumar, a 24-year-old Dalit, a term for those once known as “untouchables,” people who have suffered the greatest violence and discrimination under the centuries-old Hindu caste system.” the NYT article reads.
“They had been working in Surat, a city on the west coast, and were making their way home, part of a mass migration that began when the Indian government ordered a national lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.”
Rooted in the often-blurred milieu of identity politics entangled with ambitions and dreams for minorities in India, with Homebound, filmmaker Neerja Ghaywan’s second feature after Vicky Kaushal starrer Masan, unfolds the poignant friendship between Chandan and Shoaib that breaks the archetypical rift so seismically rooted in the social fabric.
The film brilliantly sets its tense tone right from the start, plunging us in medias res at Maapur train station, where we meet the three characters on their way to write the police recruitment exam, a pursuit driven by their desire for respect and dignity in a society that has marginalised them due to caste and religious biases.
It wastes no time to establish the battles faced by the two boys and continues to build on it almost inciting isolation, and tensed mood. Chandan is afraid to disclose his identity as a Dalit for the fear of being ostracised by those around him including Sudha who they meet at the train station. While Shoaib suffers the brunt’s of Islamophobia. In both cases, for the two friends, climbing up the social ladder is intertwined with their caste and religion. The only way to reject it is to become part of the system that gives some scope to execute power through the ambition to become constables in the police force.
But for the dreams that they cherish, the characters played with nuanced command by Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa find their genuine attempts to level-up and even humanised themselves abruptly crippled.
As much as the weight of where they come from becomes an overlooking roadblock to where they want to be, the weight of their dreams and their unwavering brotherhood become the undercurrents for their journey.
Through their struggles, the film also depicts the psychological burden of not being able to fulfill your dreams. The nuance of caste-based burden quietly finds its way into the narrative, becoming an almost invisible character that shapes the spaces the protagonists inhabit. In the village, Shoaib lives in a pakka makkan, a symbol of relative stability, while Chandan resides in a kaccha makkan, perpetually on the brink of disrepair. Sudha, though financially in a better position as a Dalit woman, grapples with her own version of marginalisation—each of them navigating a world that resists giving them solid ground to stand on. Even the fabrics that they work on in the mill are in the colour blue, green and white, maybe a deliberate choice of colours.
The only relief from this weight comes in their moments together, where the burdens of caste and religion dissolve into tender humour that hits right and genuine affection. It’s in these pockets of connection that hope and humanity shine brightest.
Homebound is emotionally charged and astoundingly beautiful, documenting the many fractured, yet resilient, facets of being human. Where the film falters slightly is in its treatment of Sudha. Despite Janhvi Kapoor’s commendable performance, her character feels perfunctory and truncated.
Where majority of the film focuses on the richly developed arcs of Chandan and Shoaib, Sudha’s limited screen time and underwritten role create a narrative disconnect—making her dynamic with the male leads feel less impactful than intended. It feels like a short pause from the otherwise consistent realism of the film.
Still, these are minor creases in an otherwise stirring and socially resonant tapestry written by Shreedhar Dubey, Neeraj Ghaywan, Varun Grover. A Dharma production film Homebound is set to hit theatres on September 26, 2025.