From margins to the Oscars: Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound redefines India’s cinematic voice

When Neeraj Ghaywan received word that his new film Homebound had been chosen as India’s official entry to the 2026 Academy Awards, the moment felt surreal. Ghaywan was hunched over his laptop, editing the film’s trailer; actor Vishal Jethwa was behind the wheel; Ishaan Khatter was mid-flight. Somewhere else, co-producer Karan Johar was calling it a “pinch-me moment.”

The film, which premiered earlier this year in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, is anything but conventional. At its heart is the unlikely friendship between Chandan (Jethwa), a Dalit, and Shoaib (Khatter), a Muslim — two young men bound by hardship and united by dreams. Homebound traces their journey against the backdrop of India’s 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, when mass migration forced millions to the margins.

Adapted loosely from Basharat Peer’s 2020 New York Times article, the film took Ghaywan nearly three years to write. “Writing took much longer than filming,” he recalls. “From a germ of an idea, we had to create an entire world.” The result is a work that recently finished as the second runner-up in the International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

For Ghaywan, who debuted with the acclaimed Masaan a decade ago, Homebound is both political and deeply personal. “In India, marginalised identities are often reduced to numbers — so many Dalits, so many migrants,” he says. “The gaze is statistical, even condescending. I wanted to humanize those numbers — to show their homes, their food, their aspirations, and what compels them to leave everything behind.”

The film also carries Ghaywan’s own imprint: childhood memories of growing up Dalit, the complicated inheritance of a patriarchal household, and the shame of trying to “pass” as upper-caste. “Yet at its core, this is a story of friendship,” he insists. “Through that, we speak to the heart of our country.”

Homebound doesn’t shy away from caste and religious prejudice, but it resists despair. Janhvi Kapoor appears in a cameo as an Ambedkarite student, while the lead actors immersed themselves in rural life, read Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, and spent months bonding before the cameras rolled. The process was rooted, Ghaywan says, in empathy. “I wanted actors who believed their characters represented something larger than a role.”

Despite the weight of its themes, Homebound pulses with resilience. “There’s so much pathos in the world we live in today,” Ghaywan reflects. “But I also saw beauty, and I wanted the film to carry hope. We must believe things can happen differently.”