Homebound movie is a 2025 Bollywood Hindi drama film. The director is Neeraj Ghaywan, and the co-writers are Ghaywan and Sumit Roy. The film’s story is based on a New York Times article by Basharat Peer from 2020.
It explores the life of childhood friends Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) while they seek to pass the Indian Police Service test. Janhvi Kapoor, Shalini Vatsa, Harshika Parmar, and Chandan K. Anand are also featured.
On May 21, the movie made its global premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. According to reports, it was given a nine-minute standing ovation. On September 26, it debuted in theaters in India to great reviews. Despite receiving extremely favorable reviews from critics, the film ended up being a huge box office failure, earning less than ₹5 crore despite having a budget of over ₹25 crore.
It made the December shortlist and was chosen as the Indian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards; however, it did not receive a nomination.
Cast and Crew:
- Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
- Screenplay: Neeraj Ghaywan, Sumit Roy
- Dialogues: Neeraj Ghaywan, Varun Grover, Shreedhar Dubey
- Story: Basharat Peer, Neeraj Ghaywan, Sumit Roy
- Producer: Karan Johar
- Apoorva Mehta, Somen Mishra
- Adar Poonawalla
- Star Cast: Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa, Janhvi Kapoor
- Cinematography: Pratik Shah
- Editor: Nitin Baid
- Music Director: Naren Chandravarkar, Benedict Taylor, Amit Trivedi
- Production companies: Dharma Productions, Toscan du Plantier
- Genres: Drama
- Distributor: Dharma Productions
- Release dates: 21 May 2025 (Cannes), 26 September 2025 (India)
- Running time: 122 minutes
- Country: India
- Language: Hindi
Homebound movie 2025 Trailer
Star Cast
- Ishaan Khatter as Mohammed Shoaib Ali
- Vishal Jethwa as Chandan Kumar Valmiki
- Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha Bharti
- Harshika Parmar as Vaishali, Chandan’s sister
- Shalini Vatsa as Phool, Chandan’s mother
- Chandan K Anand as Haroon Nawaz
- Vijay Vikram Singh as Shoaib’s boss
- Yogendra Vikram Singh as Arjun Mishra
- Pankaj Dubey as Hassan Ali, Shoaib’s father
- Shreedhar Dubey as Vikas Tripathi
- Dadhi R Pandey as Awdesh Kumar, Chandan’s father
- Sudipta Saxena as Shoaib’s mother
- Kuldeep Raghuvanshi
- Aamir Aziz as Ghanshyam
Story of the film
Shoaib (an Indian Muslim) and Chandan (a Dalit) are childhood friends from a small town in North India who dream of becoming police officers, expecting that the job will provide them the respect they never had. But as they get closer to their objective, pressure and difficulties lead to conflict in their friendship. With Sudha’s encouragement, Chandan enrolls in college. After his father’s knee injury, Shoaib finds it difficult to provide for his family.
Production
The New York Times article Taking Amrit Home (now renamed A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway) by Kashmiri writer Basharat Peer served as the inspiration for the film’s first plot. It tells the tale of two young migrant laborers in Surat who were apprehended during the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020.
Director Neeraj Ghaywan became interested in the topic during the pandemic when producer Somen Mishra of Dharma Productions suggested it. Following his critically acclaimed debut film, Masaan (2015), this is Ghaywan’s second feature. After purchasing the rights from The New York Times, Dharma Productions began writing the script, which fictionalized the backstories of both protagonists while retaining the core of the original.
Martin Scorsese was hired as executive producer by French producer Mélita Toscan du Plantier. Additionally, Scorsese assisted Ghaywan in writing the screenplay and later watched three different versions of the movie as it was being edited. The film was shot in 2024 largely in and around Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh state.
Martin Scorsese is an executive producer for Dharma Productions.
Release
On May 21, 2025, Homebound made its world premiere at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in France. In August 2025, it closed the Melbourne International Film Festival. Additionally, the movie was chosen for the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival’s Gala Presentation, which took place on September 10, 2025.
According to reports, Ghaywan was asked to make eleven changes by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which resulted in the film’s material being censored for one minute and seventeen seconds. ‘gyan’ was one of the six words that were muted and replaced. The makers were also ordered to erase the dialogue ‘Aloo gobhi… khaate hai’. Further, a two-second picture of a guy performing puja was suppressed. Additionally, the Revising Committee removed 32 seconds from a chat in a crucial part of a cricket match at 1 hour and 4 minutes.
The country’s film certification board requested some edits, which spurred discussion about the CBFC’s “arbitrary and whimsical” approach to film certification.
Ishaan discussed his thoughts on censorship in Indian movies in an interview with Zoom.
Different standards are frequently used for different films. As artists and viewers, we would value an egalitarian and open-minded approach where every tale is handled similarly. Some gain tolerance despite dubious content, while others—especially social films with a particular perspective—face more scrutiny.
On September 26, 2025, the movie opened in theaters.
Review
Critics commended Ghaywan’s direction, screenplay, language, acting, themes, and editing in Homebound, which garnered widespread recognition. The way the movie handled social commentary and the caste theme was also praised.
Critics commended Ghaywan’s direction, screenplay, language, acting, themes, and editing in Homebound, which garnered widespread recognition.
Based on six reviews, Metacritic, which employs a weighted average, gave the movie a score of 85 out of 100, indicating widespread praise.
Cinema Express’s Namrata Joshi rated it four stars and wrote Homebound has a genuineness that transcends language and writing. It’s in the realness of the spaces.
In her review for The Guardian, Leslie Felperin called the movie “an emotionally rich study of friendship” with “excellent lead performances, strong cinematography,” and she commended the director for making “a realist work about impoverished young men from a rural northern Indian town” that is “neither dumbed down nor sanitized for westerners.”
Homebound is “the first time in ages that a mainstream Hindi-language production has felt vital – at least since Ghaywan’s own Masaan,” according to Variety writer Siddhant Adlakha, who also called it “a moving character piece, as well as a searing indictment of modern India.” Additionally, he described the performances of Khatter and Jethwa as “immensely endearing and unpredictable.” News18 India’s Shrishti Negi agreed, citing Variety’s commendation of the pair’s performances.
Anuj Kumar wrote for The Hindu that the movie was “a deeply immersive and emotionally resonant cinematic experience, that is both specific to the pandemic and universal in its tone and tenor,” and that it was “a significant document of our times when social trust seems to be in a long-term decline.
“Neeraj Ghaywan’s film was praised as ‘deeply empathetic,’ with special praise for Ishaan Khatter,” stated Santanu Das of Hindustan Times.
Homebound raises a lot of concerns, according to Renuka Vyavahare, who wrote for The Times of India and gave the film five stars. How did we get here? Why are we so devoid of compassion and empathy? A soul-stirring view of a planet turning cold, this is filmmaking at its finest.
Neeraj Ghaywan’s second feature in ten years may or may not win an Oscar, but what it delivers is compassion and cautious optimism—something we sorely need in these times, according to Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express, who scored it 3.5 stars out of 5.
Subhash K Jha, writing for News 24, gave 5 stars out of 5 and remarked that I have seldom seen a film where not a single frame can be eliminated without substantially harming the finished product.
“Homebound is shorn of Amar Akbar Anthony-style melodrama and overt messaging that once characterized Hindi film portrayals of communal harmony,” wrote Anna MM Vetticad in her closing remarks for The Economic Times. Shoaib and Chandan’s unwavering commitment to one another is a powerful reminder of the friendship that endures among us despite all obstacles.
Controvers
Author and journalist Puja Changoiwala accused the Homebound creators of plagiarizing her 2021 book Homebound in December 2025. She said that in addition to stealing my book’s title, they had openly copied a significant amount of my novel’s scenes, dialogue, narrative structure, order of events, and other artistic expressions in the second part of the movie. She subsequently launched legal actions.
Dharma Productions refuted these assertions, saying: The charges of copyright infringement are unfounded, and Dharma unequivocally denies the same. Dharma’s legal counsel has received and appropriately replied to a legal notice. Homebound is an officially licensed adaptation that was inspired by an essay by Basharat Peer in The New York Times. All necessary rights were obtained legally, and proper acknowledgment was given.
Screenwriter Sumit Roy, who co-wrote the screenplay for Homebound, stated that he was not familiar with the author who made the accusations against the movie or her book, and that the accusations are baseless. Roy also stated that they “debated many titles before settling on Homebound.” Roy added that Satyajit Ray, a Bengali director, affected his screenplay, adding, Everything I said about Ray and how his humanism influenced Homebound remains as valuable as ever.
