Cannes 2025 | Homebound Review: Neeraj Ghaywan바카라�s Blistering Drama Casts A Wide, Severe Look At India바카라�s Chasms

For India바카라�s marginalized, it바카라�s a losing game. Every seeming climb gets undone by yet another structural prejudice ingrained in the collective psyche. Premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Neeraj Ghaywan바카라�s Homebound underlines this in steady progression, while also mixing in occasional scatterings of hope. The two friends at the film바카라�s center know well everything that is being pitted against their chances of triumph. One is Muslim, the other Dalit. But Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) don바카라�t abandon their pursuits so much as they twist changing stakes to best bids of survival. Before those come into play, they have to battle shame and self-erasure as fallout of their identities. Even as Shoaib takes up a temporary job, he buys a police officer바카라�s cap and keeps it close as a reminder of his goal. Homebound is abundantly bleak바카라�misery shoving into focus just when things seem promising. Yet there are also slivers of rapturous teasing, like sneaking into a friend바카라�s house for biryani or jousting over a beloved pickle brought from home to the city.

Both Shoaib and Chandan sit for the police service exams but recruitments are put on hold for a year, results indefinitely delayed. They believe the police uniform is what will lift them beyond constant anxieties bound in faith and caste. For everything they do and aspire for, identity바카라�social and religious바카라�stands in between. Both come from farming families. Chandan holds back his surname to pass for the general category in application forms. He baulks at slipping his full name to Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor)바카라�also sitting for the exam바카라�with whom he forges an instant connection. When she shares her lower-caste surname, there바카라�s a tinge of relief. Nitin Baid바카라�s edit crisply struts forth. Later, a police superintendent viciously declares how 바카라�quota rats바카라� eat into everything, while the rest like him are left with just crumbs. On one hand, Chandan is caught between hiding and owning up to his identity in public spaces; on the other, Shoaib바카라�s vocal, assertive attitude often seems to burst through at Islamophobic slurs. How long can one endure and let humiliations in the name of 바카라�joking바카라� pass? To protest risks losing everything, having to start all over again. Cricket matches with friends and office ecosystems only need a trigger to target and suspect him. Instead of being offered a chance to prove mettle, all he바카라�s asked is to supply endless records바카라�his parents바카라� IDs, his unimpeachable past.

Though Ghaywan바카라�s screenplay doesn바카라�t always hold subtlety in near sight, its emphatic, incisive intersectional understanding cleaves clear paths to the shattered heart of India바카라�s political atmosphere. In an increasingly right-wing Hindu fundamentalist nation, those slipping through the cracks of hardened, preferred identity keep lurching between mere dreaming and absolute devastation. Caste, class, gender, religion바카라�they are crucially delineated as enmeshed, yet Ghaywan is wise and probing enough to distinguish fault lines running through each structure. Nothing escapes the crushing weight of defined identity. At one point, Chandan regretfully remarks him being nothing but a 바카라�checkbox on a form바카라�. The Chandan-Sudha track is as much about their growing affection as it is about ruptures borne out of differences between either바카라�s view of empowerment.

Should he take the constable job, he바카라�d be stuck at that his entire life. Nothing will change. A degree can widen his options. With her firm Ambedkarite principles, she exhorts that he looks at the bigger picture. He reiterates that he just can바카라�t wait any longer. His house바카라�s roof is leaking. Leaping at a government job makes more sense than hanging on for more years in getting a degree. At college, he바카라�s almost lost in a sea of English-language classes. Simultaneously, he fishes for meanings in a dictionary.

Scenes like this decisive conversation between Chandan and Sudha바카라�simple in design, thornily revealing in argument바카라�imbue Homebound with acute nuance. Within a particular identity subset, there will be difference and debate in how they see their struggle. For every Chandan who바카라�s just struggling to do what바카라�ll benefit his family in the immediate, there바카라�s a Sudha, passionate and determined to take the collective struggle forward. If there바카라�s not a seat at the table, she바카라�ll bring her own chair.

A deep, bristling sense of the generational haunts Homebound. Chandan urges his mother (an indelibly wrenching Shalini Vatsa) to put ointments on her prickled feet. She refuses, reminding him of his grandmother바카라�s feet that were nothing less than sickles. 바카라�Feet is all the inheritance I바카라�ve got,바카라� she says. Chandan is the first in his family to get even the choice of a college education, denied to his sister Vaishali (Harshika Parmar), who desperately wanted it, more so than him.

Homebound바카라�s impassioned brilliance is in how it threads the social and familial바카라�the larger canvas of a community바카라�s struggle for self-determination enfolding myriad intimate dramas. Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor바카라�s score doesn바카라�t push emotions so much as it pleats them into the narrative fabric, segueing inconspicuously into a moment바카라�s swell. The tiniest of situations render a vivid dramatic impact, like migrants dropped from a truck ride in the middle of the night and nowhere, under COVID fears. Khatter and Jethwa buoy the film, etching an easy friendship that sings, frosts over, thaws and smashes hearts. They instantly capture our attention. Though the film바카라�s final stretches lend a fervid, gutting showcase for the actors, they are equally tremendous in flickering snatches of few seconds. Watch out for a scene when giddy joy slowly shades to anguished realization on Khatter바카라�s face바카라�a quiet sadness filling his eyes. Pratik Shah바카라�s camera bathes the characters in lovingly soft light, a gleam of tenderness. The few spare times the camera swoops high, unforgettable top shots blaze into the soul. One shows the friends straggling through parched landscape, the other of hordes of migrant workers silently walking at night lit by yellow street-light. There바카라�s such gentleness and dignity with which Ghaywan and Shah depict these lives. Homebound is imperative viewing바카라�as heart-tugging, discomfiting as enraging.

Homebound premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival 2025.