Homebound

One of the many things I have come to admire after moving to Toronto is the way friendships among Hindi-speaking communities carry an inspiring kind of tenderness, a caring that feels largely absent in the more restrained “white” population. Friends are treated like brothers, and since friendships are often where we form some of life’s deepest connections, seeing that warmth in a city as stoic as Toronto can be genuinely moving.

Neeraj Ghaywan captures that spirit of care and solidarity between his two protagonists in his sophomore feature Homebound, using it as the spine to explore caste, religion, and the frustrations of Indian institutions slowed by corruption and inefficiency. It tells the story of two childhood friends from a small village in North India, one Muslim and the other Dalit (a historically marginalized caste). They push each other to apply for the national police exam, which receives 2.5 million applicants for only 3,500 positions, about one job for every 700 applicants. The film becomes an epic yet intimate portrait spanning years of their lives, from the frustrations of waiting more than a year for the exam results, to weighing alternative futures, to watching caste and religion slowly drive even their intense friendship apart, and finally to the impact of the COVID pandemic, which made every hardship worse.

From that description alone, it is clear the film is anything but unambitious in both scope and theme. It sets an intimate friendship against the sweep of history in a way that recalls Zwick’s Legends of the Fall, Spielberg’s War Horse, and Ron Howard’s Far and Away. By capturing the intensity of the friendship in the first act, Ghaywan makes the outside pressures feel even weightier. Homebound, however, does not reach for the grandeur of those films. Instead of a sweeping score, it has a respectful and muted one by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor, setting the tone for a film that avoids melodrama but still aims to draw a tear or two.

Viewers looking for a more radical or formally challenging take on poverty and hardship may find the approach restrained. The storytelling remains straightforward and often lacks subtlety, with characters repeating the same points while the film underlines its message almost as if flashing signs that say “poor” or “outcast.” It sometimes drifts toward soap-opera territory when heavy moments intersect with quarrels or trivial misunderstandings, particularly in the scenes with the girlfriend. With its multi-year scope, the film also encounters familiar pitfalls of the form, including stretches of uneven pacing, a few predictable beats, and supporting characters who could have been more fully realized. The COVID pandemic subplot expands the canvas further, though it often feels like material that might have been more effective as a film of its own.

Given that, seeing Scorsese’s name in the credits may feel surprising at first. Yet the director, who has openly expressed his admiration for Ghaywan’s earlier film Masaan, was clearly drawn to the urgency of themes such as caste, religious marginalization, and the migrant crisis. These are subjects mainstream Hindi cinema usually avoids, and here they are placed at the forefront. At the same time, the film never loses sight of the friendship at its core, with the two actors conveying their bond with conviction and giving the story an emotional anchor that makes the broader social critique resonate. The result is a deeply empathetic film, one that international audiences accustomed to more formally daring cinema might dismiss as safe, but that in the context of Indian cinema marks a significant step, more important and more heartfelt than its tear-jerking surface may suggest.

This is part of Reviews On Reels TIFF 2025 Coverage. Due to the hectic rhythm of a film festival, it may be tweaked in the future. Still courtesy of TIFF.

At a glance

3.5/5

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#25 of 73 in TIFF 2025 RankedSee the ranking →

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