Neeraj Ghaywan’s film Homebound starts with a conversation between two friends: Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan Kumar Valmiki (Vishal Jethwa). Ali says, “We can’t keep running away, Chandan. When you wear that uniform, your faith and caste no longer matter. Once we become cops, nobody will dare humiliate us.”

Rather than building up the argument to prove the point, at the start of the film itself, Ghaywan suggests that both Muslims and Dalits are humiliated because of their religion and caste and that they need a layer of protection, in this case a police uniform. Inspired by the Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer’s 2020 opinion piece Taking Amrit Home (now retitled A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway), Ghaywan’s film takes significant creative liberty to portray Ali and Valmiki as the victims of the system. The film is based on a real story of two friends, namely, Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, who went to Surat for work as migrants, but only one returned, as the other died from fever before he could reach home.

The film vilifies the upper castes. In one scene, Arjun Mishra (Yogendra Vikram Singh), a Brahmin, asks Ali—working as an office boy—not to refill his water bottle; in another, after they finish watching the India–Pakistan cricket match, Mishra taunts him, saying, if it were in Ali’s hands, he would have entered the ground and taken eight wickets for Pakistan. Further, he calls out the halwa brought by Ali from home, made by his mother, as “authentically Lahori,” highlighting the casual prejudice of an upper-caste toward a Muslim. Conversations between Valmiki and his friend Sudha Bharti—whom he meets on the railway platform and falls in love with later—attempt to highlight tales of oppression. “But what will really change, Chandan? These people aren’t afraid of the uniform,” says Bharti. In Bharti’s dialogue, “these people” refer to the “upper castes.” The film’s intent seems to extend the discourse of oppression—introducing that Brahmins not only subjugate lower castes but also target Muslims. Peer’s account has no such colleague.

Produced by Dharma Productions, Homebound received a nine-minute-long standing ovation at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where the movie was screened in the Un Certain Regard category. I went through the reviews across mainstream publications, but didn’t notice any being critical of it, let alone how it portrays the upper castes. 

The Dalit filmmaker has played smartly with the location. As per Peer’s piece, two of Saiyub’s brothers leave for Mumbai to find work. Yet, in the film, Ali’s father, Hussain Ali (Pankaj Dubey), wants him to move to Dubai—a city with a majority Muslim population—as he believes Muslims are being insulted in India every day, reinforcing the film’s narrative of systemic hostility and victimhood towards the Muslims.

The disclaimer of Homebound says that “the filmmaker believes in the constitutional values and Indian tradition of religious coexistence.” But the film itself does not reflect that. It also claims to “recognise the contribution of the central and state governments, their various agencies and all the Corona Warriors,” but this appears only in a short, one-minute news clip. Overall, the film gives a one-sided outlook and ignores the efforts it claims to stand for.

In reality, a local politician helped Saiyub, arranged an ambulance, and his friend Kumar was taken first to a small hospital and later shifted to a better-equipped facility, where he died in the ICU. The film, on the other hand, shows Valmiki dying in his friend, Ali’s lap, alone on a deserted highway, with no one coming to his aid—neither authorities nor any other person.

In another scene of the first half, Valmiki is shown being questioned by an upper-caste government official about his caste. In the scene, Valmiki says, “I am a Kayastha,” but a subtitling error shows it as “I am a Brahmin.” Further, the official says, “Ye aarakshan waale sabhi seat bator lete hain” (all these people with reservations grab all the seats). The subtitle renders this as ‘these quota rats grab all the seats.’

Homebound is one of the many movies in which facts have been manipulated, yet it received recognition and acclaim. Jai Bhim, released in November 2021, swapped the character of the sub-inspector—one of the villains in the film—with a person belonging to the Vanniyar community. In reality, the sub-inspector was Anthony Sami and was not from the aforementioned community.

“Nobody bothered me,” Saiyub told Peer. “I did my job. I got paid.” The man the film is about says no one bothered him. The film had to invent the people who did.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated for length and clarity. The spelling of actor Vishal Jethwa’s name has been corrected.