Director - Neeraj Ghaywan
Cast - Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa, Janhvi Kapoor, 
Duration – 122 Minutes
 
In a village nestled deep in the countryside, Maapur, three individuals—Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa), Mohommad Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter), and Sudha Bharti (Janhvi Kapoor)—are each waging their own silent wars. Ostracised by caste, religion, and class, they bear centuries of prejudice on their shoulders. And yet, they hope—of joining the police, of altering the scripts that society has written for them. Their aspirations, though, crash into a far bleaker world. Just as they step up to the starting line of their aspirations, the pandemic arrives, and the world closes down. They are stuck, dislodged, abandoned. Homebound isn't so much about coming home—it's about what home is when the world never let you in to start with.
 
For most, the COVID-19 shutdown was a nuisance—working at home, baking sourdough, waiting it out. But for others, it was a gradual fall of all things: work, residence, self-respect. And for the very poorest, it was hell disguised as quiet. Neeraj Ghaywan, one of the few directors who reliably brings these narratives to the screen without show, presents us with a raw and compassionate explanation of what it feels to be invisible. While pandemic dramas will continue to be produced for years to come, few are going to be this urgent, this specific, or this empathetic.
 
The film, based on Basharat Peer's Taking Amrit Home, is based on fact—not in generalities, but in good, agonized detail. Written by Ghaywan and Sumit Roy, with Varun Grover and Shriidhar Dubey's dialogues, the screenplay encompasses a spectrum of lived realities without ever reducing them to spectacle. We encounter Chandan, a Dalit young man who is aware that clearing the police exam will still not guarantee that he will be free of the stamp society has put on his name. Shoaib, a Muslim man, has been living in the knowledge of othering for a long time. Sudha, the Ambedkarite, seethes with the urge to rise not merely herself but her whole world. All the characters are on a different level of self-awareness, but they are all held together by a common feeling—weariness.
 
The strength of Homebound is not in bombast, but in the fact that it does not turn away. Neeraj does not preach, and he does not certainly glamorize poverty or adversity. He watches. And in that moment, we witness all of it: Chandan's heel-cracked mother walking miles for water, the HR manager refusing Shoaib a sip due to his name, a sister held back from school so her brother can impersonate membership in a caste he secretly dreads. These moments deliver like internal gut punches, each one more shattering than the previous.
 
Vishal Jethwa is heartbreakingly good as Chandan. He acts vulnerability with such earnestness that you forget the actor completely. His metamorphosis across the film—from terrified idealist to jaded realist—is gradual, agonizing, and immensely moving. Ishaan Khatter, finally in a role that requires him to do more than look good, gives a performance full of suppressed rage and silent anguish. He is never gets boiled down to a stereotype, and that's the reason his anguish feels real. And then there is Janhvi Kapoor. As Sudha, she enters uncharted territory and claims it. No glamour here—just grit, compassion, and determination. She has fewer minutes on screen than the rest, but her presence haunts. You walk out of the cinema not only wondering what becomes of her, but also how she came to be this woman in the first place. Sudha needs her own film, period.
The visual and auditory vocabulary of Homebound does most of the emotional heavy lifting. Pratik Shah's photography puts us in the midst of the characters' claustrophobia—never exploitative, always intimate. The camera holds back when it must and shocks when it must most. Varun Grover's dialogue is crisp but held in check. There's nothing excess about it, only truth. Even the silences hurt. The end product is a film that requires emotional engagement, not intellectual curiosity.
 
Above all, Homebound is a movie about empathy. Not the sentimental kind that resolves with a round of applause, but the painful kind—the kind that makes you confront your own privilege. The movie doesn't make you feel sorry for its characters. It just makes you look at them. It doesn't urge you towards revolution, but it quietly insists upon dignity—for all. That alone makes it essential viewing.
 
Ultimately, Homebound is not something you "enjoy." It's a movie you bring with you. It rumbles, itches, and makes itself at home in your conscience. It keeps the memory alive that the systems we learn to take for granted are usually constructed on the bodies of individuals we prefer not to notice. Neeraj Ghaywan, once more, presents a mirror—silent, serene, and devastating. You might not want to see what it shows you. But you won't ever forget.