India’s official entry to the 98th Oscars has been announced. It will be the movie Homebound starring Janhvi Kapoor, Ishan Khattar, and Vishal Jethwa. There were Telugu movies in competition with this movie for entrance to the Oscars, but this movie emerged victorious. It is a story of two friends, Chandan Kumar and Mohammed Shoaib Ali, who attend college and aspire to become police officers. However, it’s also about the struggles in the city due to casteism and religious differences. During their spare time, they also work. Shoaib Ali suffers from religious vilification when an employee asks him not to fill his water bottle at the place of his employment. On the other hand, Chandan Kumar is afraid to mention his complete name to people as he is a Dalit (a minority caste in India).
This movie was an official selection at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section due to its unique storyline. It was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. However, its unique storyline may not win favor with the Indian audience. The story of the movie is based on Taking Amrit Home (renamed as A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Besides the Highway), written by Basharat Peer. It was a 2020 essay in the New York Times about two temporary workers stuck in the pandemic, trying to reach their homes. Basharat saw a picture of a man with a red bag and a half-filled water bottle lying beside him, holding his dying, feverish friend near a highway in India.
The characters of Chandan and Shoaib in the movie are based on these two men. During 2020, when the migrant workers were laid off from their jobs due to the lockdown and were forced to stay in one place, they faced adversity because of the travel ban. They were not earning, so they had nothing to eat and nowhere to stay. They could not reach home and hence were unable to survive. This film is two hours long. It is a Dharma Productions movie, partially owned by Karan Johar, known in India for producing ice-candy cinema. Martin Scorsese also contributed to the movie, helping write the screenplay apart from producing the movie. Neeraj Ghaywan is the director and the screenplay writer of this movie, making it his second directorial feature after Masaan, starring Vicky Kaushal in his debut and Richa Chaddha in the lead roles.
This movie is a far cry from the dreamy cinema Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions is known to produce.
He has a 50% stake in the company, besides Adar Poonawalla. Besides being a producer, Karan Johar has also featured as a judge in several reality shows. This movie will be released in India on September 26 in theaters.
