When Bollywood titan Karan Johar‘s Dharma Productions backs a film exploring caste and religious discrimination in rural India with Martin Scorsese as executive producer, cinema history gets rewritten.
“Homebound,” Neeraj Ghaywan’s long-awaited sophomore feature, produced by Johar along with Somen Mishra, Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta and co-produced by Mélita Toscan du Plantier, isn’t just heading to Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section — it’s smashing industry conventions about who gets to tell which stories and how far they can travel.
The unlikely creative alliance between Bollywood’s glossiest producer, an indie filmmaker with uncompromising social vision, and cinema’s most revered living director has yielded an anticipated festival appearance.
Ghaywan’s 2015 debut “Masaan” had its world premiere at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand where it won both the Fipresci Prize and Promising Future Award. The path to securing cinema royalty as their champion came through co-producer du Plantier, who produced “Masaan” and has a longstanding relationship with Scorsese.
“Martin had seen ‘Masaan’ and was very interested in what Neeraj’s next would be,” Johar tells Variety. “Just the fact that I heard his notes – that Martin Scorsese has notes on a film that I have a credit on – I’m not sure I’m being able to recover from this out-of-body feeling.”
In “Homebound,” desperate to break free from the weight of their marginalized identities, two childhood friends from a North Indian village – Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa) – push against a world stacked against them. Convinced that a police constable’s job will bring them the dignity they’ve long been denied, they chase it with urgency and hope. Chandan meets Sudha Bharti (Janhvi Kapoor), who urges him to pursue education instead. Meanwhile Shoaib struggles with his financial burdens worsened by his father’s ailment. Bound by brotherhood, they confront the disillusionment of a system that failed them.
Scorsese’s creative influence began early. “He started from the scripting stage,” Ghaywan reveals. “He gave copious amounts of notes, not just in the scripting but also on the editing stage. He saw three cuts. It’s insane, him saying your character names and talking with such length.”
For Johar, whose Dharma Productions built its empire on glossy, star-studded blockbusters, “Homebound” represents the continuation of a less-recognized aspect of his company’s work – one that has included festival favorites and critically acclaimed titles that push boundaries.
“I don’t know why we get slotted,” Johar says with a hint of frustration. “I’ve been saying this a lot because from actually producing even parts of anthologies – Neeraj himself has directed ‘Geeli Pucchi’ for us in [Netflix’s] ‘Ajeeb Daastaans’ – to trying to move the bar of cinema with films like ‘Kapoor & Sons’ right up to ‘Kill,’ which was at Toronto in 2023… we’ve been trying to always do that one film once in a while that breaks barriers and creates a great profile for us as a production house that is not just swimming in the mainstream, but also wants to come to the beautiful, cinematic shore.”
On what drew him to “Homebound” specifically, Johar’s answer is disarmingly simple: “There are only two things I can say. One is Neeraj. The other is Ghaywan,” he says. “I was like, he always had me at hello.”
The film stars next-gen talents Ishaan Khatter (Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple”), Janhvi Kapoor (“Devara Part 1”) – both from film families – alongside Vishal Jethwa (“Tiger 3”). For a film exploring marginalization and social inequity, casting “star kids” might seem counterintuitive, but both filmmakers insist the actors’ commitment transcended their privileged backgrounds.
“I genuinely went with the feeling of collaborating with people who have kindness,” Ghaywan emphasizes. “People who believed in me, who were inspired by the script.”
The search for Chandan was particularly extensive. “We casted for like, a really long time,” Ghaywan reveals. “We tried casting for many people for Vishal’s part. But I was somehow navigating towards Vishal because, apart from being a good actor, he also had a sense of innocence. You know, that really brought something to the film, because you would want it to be something tender, and that’s how Vishal came on board.”
Johar, a connoisseur of star quality, says of Khatter: “He’s a chameleon. You can put him in [Netflix’s] ‘The Royals,’ and he’ll deliver that kind of sexy boy look which is like thirst trap and everyone’s national crush these days, and you put him in ‘Homebound,’ and he’ll rip your gut out emotionally.”
For Kapoor, daughter of late Indian cinema icon Sridevi and producer Boney Kapoor, the film represented a transformation both onscreen and off. Ghaywan is particularly protective of the actor who has faced intense public scrutiny.
“She’s been maligned publicly and heavily trolled, but when people see this film and her true potential, they’ll wake up to see she’s really made of something else,” he insists. The director describes how Kapoor “started questioning her own privilege” during preparation. “I gave her [Bhimrao Ramji] Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of Caste’ to read, and she went into a rabbit hole of trying to understand the glaring differences that we live with together.” Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution and a fierce crusader against caste discrimination, redefined the nation’s legal and social framework.
Johar adds that for Kapoor, the experience was more therapeutic than professional: “She felt she was in 10 days of therapy with Neeraj, and she felt healed as a result. Even now, she says those seven or eight days spent on the sets of ‘Homebound’ will be her best days spent on a film set. She felt she wasn’t really acting but going through some sort of personal catharsis.”
Ghaywan’s preparation was immersive and transformative. “I took the boys for a long immersion exercise. We stayed in villages,” he explains. “No matter what we do, we can’t replicate the lived experience of somebody. We can only empathize. We can only do as much justice as we can.”
One moment during this process crystallized the film’s purpose for the director: “In a sitting inside a very poor man’s house in a village, we were eating, and I just felt so banal. I felt like, what is the point of all of this? Because this moment is so special that me making a film is so insignificant compared to this amazing life unfolding in front of me.”
That authenticity is why Johar gave Ghaywan complete creative control: “I told him the one thing you should not listen to is me. You should actually just do whatever your heart desires, because you know the world of this film. It’s coming from a very solid place in your heart, and just follow your gut. I’m there to just back you like a silent supporter, but on the sidelines.”
The film tackles sensitive topics of caste and religion in India, and despite tackling divisive issues, both men reject the notion their film takes sides. “At its heart, it’s a friendship story,” Johar says. “There’s a humanitarian perspective to it. There is no villain in this film. Most of us know that we live in the gray, and rarely are we addressing the gray. What Neeraj does so beautifully is that all characters operate from the gray. They combat the grayness within their ecosystem and within their DNA, and then they emerge from there with a slight light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ghaywan, who hails from a marginalized community himself, adds: “My intent with this film is not to villainize but to speak to the other side with empathy as well. I want to hold their hand, make them sit next to me and say, ‘Hey, look at this. This is what happened in this person’s life. Do you want to rethink about what’s going on?’”
For Johar, having an officially selected film at Cannes represents a culmination. “To me, it’s the holy grail of world cinema, literally the temple of world cinema,” he says with characteristic passion. “I was there in a film that was an anthology with ‘Bombay Talkies’ [2013]… with Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, and Zoya Akhtar,” Johar says. The film was a special screening at Cannes to commemorate 100 years of Indian cinema. “Now, many years later, properly with an officially selected film with the beautiful golden leaf settled on our poster with Mr. Scorsese being the executive producer… I feel like it’s living a cinematic dream,” Johar adds.
Ghaywan, returning to Cannes after a decade, reflects on his journey from cinephile to celebrated filmmaker: “Every year in those early days of cinephilia, you would make a list of all the Cannes films. Anurag [Kashyap] and I used to compete about who’s seen which film. I was so jealous if he’d seen one before me.”
He pauses, the gravity of his return apparent. “Not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine having a film in a competition section. In a way, it is like me ‘homebound’ to Cannes.”
Paradise City Sales is handling international sales for “Homebound,” with WME Independent representing North American rights.
