The film, starring actors Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Jahnvi Kapoor, received a nine-minute standing ovation, signalling a positive reception. The duration of the standing ovation has become an unofficial barometer for the success of a film at the festival, with Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) holding the top record of 22 minutes.
Ghaywan’s directorial debut, Masaan, was also screened under the Un Certain Regard section at the 2015 Cannes festival, winning two awards. The Un Certain Regard (translated as ‘a certain glance’) category runs parallel to the main competition and platforms arthouse directors and young auteurs.
Homebound follows the story of two friends, a Muslim and a Dalit, as they aspire to shed the socio-economic realities that constrain them till the 2020 coronavirus pandemic alters their lives forever.
The film, backed by American filmmaking legend Martin Scorsese and Bollywood giant Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, was inspired by a 2020 essay in The New York Times by Basharat Peer, former Opinions editor at the publication.
A poignant tale of an interfaith friendship
Peer’s op-ed first appeared in the Sunday edition of The New York Times on August 2, 2020, with the headline, ‘Taking Amrit Home’. (It’s now available to read on the website as ‘A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway’.) Ghaywan was intrigued by Peer’s article, prompting Dharma Productions to buy its rights from The New York Times. By then, Peer had left his job at the Times and received no royalties for his work.
Peer wrote of real-life friends Mohammad Saiyub, a 22-year-old Muslim, and Amrit Kumar, a 24-year-old Dalit, who belong to Devari village in Uttar Pradesh. A striking photo, showing Saiyub cradling an unconscious Amrit on the side of a road, first drew Peer’s attention. The image captured the desperation of India’s stranded migrant workers during the peak of the Covid lockdown and quickly went viral on social media.
Mohammad Saiyub cradling his friend Amrit Kumar, who had collapsed from a heatstroke.
In an interview with entertainment writer Aseem Chhabra, Peer revealed that when he set out to report on this story, he had called up his editor in New York and said the story would need 3,000-4,000 words or “maybe more”. He admitted that he was scared because the Covid situation “was quite bad at that time”.
According to Peer, Saiyub and Amrit’s friendship was unassuming and untethered to the politics of their identities. “Interfaith friendships in India are not as uncommon as the regnant political discourse might suggest,” he writes in his essay.
Unlike the movie, where the two aspire for a police job to reclaim “dignity”, Saiyub and Amrit worked at separate factories in Gujarat’s Surat. They aimed to earn enough to send money back home. They shared a rented room in the city. But when the pandemic struck, the factories were shut down and the duo were out of jobs. For a bit, they whiled away their time in Surat, but soon, they began running out of savings. They needed to head home.
Saiyub and Amrit decided they would take one of the government-run special trains back home, but couldn’t get a ticket for weeks. Finally, they decided to board a truck carrying other workers like them to Uttar Pradesh. To reach it, they walked over 24 kilometres through the stifling May heat. Cramped into the truck with others, Amrit developed a fever. Co-passengers decided to leave him behind, fearing he was infected. Saiyub chose to stick by his friend. The duo were stranded in a small village in Madhya Pradesh. With a local politician’s help, Saiyub and Amrit were admitted to the hospital, where Amrit passed away due to dehydration, leaving Saiyub with the task of getting his body back to his folks in Devari. Both Saiyub and Amrit had tested negative for Covid at the time.
The plight of migrants during Covid pandemic
Migrant workers like Saiyub and Amrit were the worst-hit by the nationwide lockdowns imposed in March 2020 to curb the spread of Covid. These workers were left without jobs, adversely impacting their savings, food security and health. Many of them covered perilous journeys on foot, walking thousands of kilometres.
While exact figures remain unknown, a study suggests that over 44 million workers migrated back in the first lockdown and over 26 million in the second.
To facilitate this unprecedented reverse urban to rural migration, the government introduced special ‘Shramik trains’ in May. The trains ran free of charge for the workers, with the Central and state governments picking up the tab. However, this mass exodus spotlighted the worrying gaps in policies to protect this vulnerable section of society, including a lack of data on unorganised workers and access to government schemes.
Homebound, premiered on Wednesday at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where the movie is competing under the Un Certain Regard category. (Cannes) 
Mohammad Saiyub cradling his friend Amrit Kumar, who had collapsed from a heatstroke.
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