Cannes 2025: Directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and produced by Karan Johar; story behind Ishaan Khatter & Janhvi Kapoor’s Homebound

Neeraj Ghaywan’s directorial new film Homebound, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, is on a real-life story first told in a New York Times op-ed during India’s COVID-19 lockdown.

_Homebound_, which drew a standing ovation at its premiere but did not take home any awards. The film is inspired by journalist Basharat Peer’s 2020 essay Taking Amrit Home (now retitled A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway).

About Homebound

The story is on two migrant workers, Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, friends from Devari village in Uttar Pradesh. Will the urban, educated Indians were fortunate to stay safe at home, their journey was very different. In March 2020 when lockdown was enforced in India, all factories were shut, these two migrant workers Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, friends from Devari village in Uttar Pradesh, one Muslim and the other Dalit who were sharing a rented accommodation in Gujrat with very little savings, they didn’t know how they would reach home.

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With public transport suspended and no access to train tickets, they eventually boarded a crowded truck headed for home. During the journey, Amrit fell seriously ill. Rest of the passengers abandoned Amrit, but his friend stood by him. Though Amrit died in a village hospital in Madhya Pradesh, not due to COVID, but dehydration, his friend took his body home.

What Basharat Peer, the writer of the essay had to say?

“Friendship at the heart of the story between a Muslim and a Dalit man embodied something profound. They had not set out to represent any ideological coalition; theirs was simply a human bond, formed in their village. In today’s world, everything is reduced to categories and identities, but people remain far more complex.”

The essay was cinematically conceptualized by filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan. This is Ghaywan’s second time at the prestigious gala where he brought his directorial debut ‘Masaan’ back in 2015. The critically-acclaimed social drama also premiered in the same section where it won two awards.

(With inputs from agencies)