‘Homebound’ Review: A Moving Portrait of Friendship in the Shadow of the Caste Divide
Two teenagers from marginalized communities in rural India dream of a better future, but when the pandemic hits, the fragile world they’ve built is shaken, revealing how deeply social and caste inequalities still shape their lives. Available on Netflix.
Very few Indian films make it to the Cannes Film Festival. In recent years, thanks to filmmakers like Payal Kapadia, Indian independent cinema has been gaining visibility there, appearing in major sections and even winning awards, as All We Imagine as Light did in 2024. The following year, with less media attention but similar ambition, another Indian title premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Now released globally by Netflix and selected as India’s submission to the Academy Awards, Homebound tells the story of two teenagers on the margins of Indian society whose hopes and hard work collide with a crisis no one saw coming: the pandemic.
Director Neeraj Ghaywan based the film on a photograph that went viral in India in 2020 and was later published in The New York Times, where the story behind the image was also reported. It’s better not to describe the photo — and viewers would do well not to click the link before watching the movie — since it reveals a major turn of the story. Instead, Ghaywan rewinds from that moment, following the lives of the two boys captured in the image and the long path that brought them there.
Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa) and Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) come from a small town in northwestern India and, for different reasons, do not belong to the dominant groups within the traditional caste and social order that still shapes much of daily life. Chandan is Dalit — a community historically labeled “untouchable” and pushed into the lowest-paid, hardest labor. Mohammed is Muslim, not a caste but a minority religion — about 14% of India’s population — that often faces subtle and explicit discrimination in many areas of public and private life.
Both boys share one dream: joining the police force, a government job that could offer security, dignity, and a way to escape the limits placed on them since birth. They sit for the entrance exam but face two daunting challenges. First, the staggering competition: more than two million applicants for roughly 3,500 openings. Second, a slow and opaque bureaucracy in which exam results can take a year to appear. While waiting, each tries to support his family. One starts working at a company that sells household products door to door, doing well at the job until his lack of schooling and background become grounds to push him aside. The other enrolls in college — less out of academic ambition than to be closer to Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor), the girl he likes.
When the exam results finally come out, their paths begin to diverge. The pressure mounts, old loyalties strain, Kumar hides his caste on official paperwork, and Ali finds himself constantly required to prove his identity and legitimacy. Even when both manage to find modest work and send money home, a new adversary appears: COVID-19. The pandemic becomes a harsh reminder of how far the distance is between those who have mobility and resources and those who are always the first to fall through the cracks.
Homebound unfolds like a classical social drama, tightly structured and centered on a slow, painful realization: these boys are not failing because they lack talent or discipline, but because the system is not built for people like them. Ghaywan occasionally comes close to the kind of emotional excess typical of mainstream Indian cinema, but he always pulls back, choosing sincerity over melodrama.
For those unfamiliar with India’s caste system, some nuances may slip by, but the effects are impossible to miss. Kumar’s mother loses her job serving school lunches because others refuse to eat food touched by a Dalit. Ali is casually mocked by colleagues during a cricket match between India and Pakistan — the implication being that, as a Muslim, he must support the “other side.” And when COVID hits, the limits of their access and protection become painfully clear.
Homebound is not just a pandemic story but a portrait of how long-standing social, religious, and ethnic hierarchies sharpened during lockdown. Indian law technically prohibits discrimination based on caste, yet those divisions persist because they survive in tradition, habit, and fear — forces that no legal code can eliminate overnight. The pandemic only amplified them: fear of infection, precarious work, and enforced distance gave new cover to old prejudices. And in that harsh reality, the boys discover the only support they can truly count on — each other. Solidarity among the abandoned becomes their shared refuge, and in that relationship, the film finds its deepest emotional truth.
