The daring movie ‘Homebound’ bought Oscar buzz, is now on Netflix : NPR

Mohammad Saiyub poses for an image in a crowded Mumbai quarter on a recent February day. Saiyub appeared in an image that went viral during the early days of the pandemic. He, a Muslim, tried to save the life of his best friend, Amrit Kumar, a Dalit Hindu, in the early days of the pandemic. The two were hitching a ride home, a journey of nearly a 1,000 miles, when Kumar fell ill and was kicked off the truck they were on. Saiyub stayed with his friend by the roadside, waiting for assistance. The backstory of that viral image was told in a 2020 New York Times essay, which went on to inspire the movie.

Mohammad Saiyub (above, in a Mumbai quarter on a February day) appeared in a photograph that went viral within the early days of the pandemic. He and his childhood buddy Amrit Kumar had been hitching house, a journey of almost 1,000 miles. Kumar, who’s a Hindu Dalit, fell in poor health. Saiyub, a Muslim, cradled his pal by the roadside. Their totally different non secular identities drew consideration in a rustic the place communal relations have been polarized after a decade of Hindu nationalist rule. The photograph and the story behind it impressed the award-winning film Homebound.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Diaa Hadid/NPR

DEVARI, India — The legendary Martin Scorsese was the film’s govt producer though his position was saved secret to make sure the movie crew may preserve working with out attracting media consideration. He was even assigned a code identify: “elder brother.”

That is as a result of Neeraj Ghaywan, director of Homebound, did not need to go public together with his film till it was prepared. He anxious its central story is likely to be acquired with hostility by Indian media — by a rustic — profoundly modified by a decade of rule by the e Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Occasion, generally known as the BJP.

He needn’t have anxious.

Homebound, is predicated on a real story: a young friendship between two boys from a dusty village, one a Muslim; the opposite a Dalit, a South Asian caste as soon as generally known as “untouchables.” The film revolves round their failed makes an attempt to push by way of the discrimination they face in at present’s India as their lives are upturned and imperiled by the Indian authorities’s response to the COVID pandemic.

“I treaded that path very, very rigorously. Like we did not disclose in regards to the story for a very long time. We had been being very cautious,” Ghaywan tells NPR. “I assumed: Let the movie communicate for itself.”

Neeraj Ghaywan attends the "Homebound" Awards Q&A Screening at The Garden Cinema on November 24, 2025 in London, England.

Neeraj Ghaywan is the director of Homebound.

Kate Inexperienced/Getty Pictures/Getty Pictures Europe

disguise caption

toggle caption

Kate Inexperienced/Getty Pictures/Getty Pictures Europe

The movie has spoken for itself — helped in fact, by the megaphone that’s the backing of one of many world’s most outstanding administrators.

Cannes beloved it — a nine-minute standing ovation. Homebound made the rounds of movie festivals, gathered up medals alongside the best way, then was chosen by India for consideration for an Oscar within the overseas movie class. It even made it to the distinguished shortlist — a uncommon feat for any Indian film.

Primarily based on a real story

Homebound is predicated on a New York Instances essay from 2020 by author Basharat Peer. It tells the backstory of {a photograph} that went viral in the course of the early days of the pandemic in India. The picture reveals one man cradling one other in his lap within the filth, by the roadside. And that man is clearly unwell.

“Simply the care and the dignity, the {photograph} moved me immensely,” says Peer. “It was an ideal act of friendship.”

Then Peer found the boys had been Hindu and Muslim, and it drew him in, due to the context of “every thing that had come earlier than that previously 10 years,” he says, referring to the routine vilification of Muslims by Hindu nationalists, together with members of the ruling BJP celebration, and the prime minister himself. Maybe most prominently this 12 months, in February, the chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, generated an AI video of himself capturing Muslims. It was shared by his celebration and solely taken down after a backlash, and a member of the state’s BJP social media staff was fired.)

The 2 males within the picture are garment manufacturing facility staff: Mohammad Saiyub, a Muslim and Amrit Kumar, a Dalit.

That picture captured them as they had been making an attempt to get house after the Modi authorities shut down most industries and transport to forestall the unfold of the virus.

However with no work, migrant staff, who survive off low wages, started going hungry — and making an attempt to go away. Economist Jayati Ghosh, who researched India’s COVID response, estimates some 80 million migrant staff tried to return house, strolling and hitching rides in searing summer season warmth.

Peer says it reminded him of the Mud Bowl exodus of the ’30s in the US. “I used to be desirous about Steinbeck and the Mud Bowl migrants, which led him to put in writing Grapes of Wrath,” says Peer — besides in India: “They are not operating from their Mud Bowl villages. They’re operating from the Californias to their villages.”

Migrants died enroute — together with the person in that viral photograph, Amrit Kumar. “He died of warmth exhaustion,” his pal Mohammad Saiyub tells us in a tiny tea home in a crowded Mumbai quarter, the place staff sat at stainless-steel tables to down steaming cups of chai, boiled in an enormous, blackened pot manned by an adolescent whose face was largely buried in his telephone. Saiyub was within the port metropolis to search for work.

Saiyub says the day that photograph was taken, he and Kumar had paid a truck driver the equal of $53 for a experience. The cargo was full of different migrant staff, determined to return house. However Kumar developed a fever, and the driving force booted him off. “They anxious he had corona,” Saiyub recalled.

So Saiyub helped his pal off the truck. Then, he says, “the driving force instructed me, you get on the truck and let’s go.” Saiyub refused to desert his pal. They sat by the roadside, ready for assist. That is when somebody took their photograph. Because the picture unfold on-line, an ambulance raced to search out them.

Too late.

Saiyub finally returned house together with his pal’s physique. He dug his greatest pal’s grave. “My blood is Kumar’s,” he says. “And Kumar’s blood is mine. We had been associates like that.”

A private connection

Director Ghaywan learn the essay, drawn in by that tender friendship between a Muslim and a Dalit Hindu.

There was additionally a really private purpose that Ghaywan was so affected: He was born right into a Dalit household however hid that info for a lot of his life, fearing rejection by his upper-caste friends if he instructed them the reality about who he was.

Ghaywan additionally occurs to be a celebrated wunderkid in Bollywood. He bought the backing of a significant manufacturing studio to make Homebound.

He drew on his personal experiences of worry and disgrace as a Dalit-in-hiding to attract Kumar’s character. “Within the movie, I poured in numerous my very own disgrace.” And he hoped to humanize a narrative not often instructed, about India’s downtrodden staff. “I felt there’s a robust springboard to speak about up to date India,” Ghaywan mentioned.

Movie critic and curator Meenakshi Shedde mentioned the choice to place cash on a film like Homebound spoke to Ghaywan’s abilities as a director, and but remained, one thing of a “miracle.”

“In at present’s India, you may think about how daring it’s of a producer to place cash on a movie that is going towards the grain,” Shedde mentioned. The grain she refers to is the stuff that Bollywood is more and more churning out: movies that replicate the Indian authorities’s Hindu nationalist ideology – with macho Hindu males combating evil Muslims and proud Indians battling enemy Pakistan.

India’s notoriously prickly censors accredited the movie for screening within the nation, though they insisted on modifications that diminished the depth of the caste and religion discrimination that the protagonists confronted. Nonetheless, Ghaywan says, “the soul of the movie remained intact.”

After which, it was chosen as India’s official entry for the Oscars.

It was a hanging option to signify India. Simply final 12 months, an Indian film that critics globally tipped as an Oscar winner was handed over by the identical choice committee. Critics urged that was as a result of it featured a steamy Hindu-Muslim romance.

(NPR sought to talk to the Indian choice committee however acquired no response.)

Movie curator Shedde mentioned she, like lots of her friends, had been dumbstruck. “How did they find yourself being India’s submission? OK, so these are, I feel, mysteries of the universe,” says Shedde.

In the end, Homebound made it to the Oscar shortlist for greatest overseas movie however not the ultimate 5.

A really private screening

In any case the thrill died down, Ghaywan set about screening the film within the one place that basically mattered: in Devari, the dusty hamlet that Kumar and Sayoub got here from.

The families of two young men whose story formed the backbone of an Oscar-nominated movie, “Homebound,” gather to watch it together on a recent February day. The director, Neeraj Ghaywan, set up the makeshift screening room on the balcony of the family of Mohammad Saiyub in the northern Indian village of Devari. In an image that went viral, Saiyub, a Muslim, tried to save the life of his best friend, Amrit Kumar, a Dalit Hindu, in the early days of the pandemic. The two were hitching a ride home, a journey of nearly a 1,000 miles, when Kumar fell ill and was kicked off the truck they were on. Saiyub stayed with his friend by the roadside, waiting for assistance. The backstory of that viral image was told in a 2020 New York Times essay, which went on to inspire the movie.

The households of two younger males whose friendship impressed the film Homebound collect for a makeshift screening on the balcony of the house of Mohammad Saiyub.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Diaa Hadid/NPR

That day, Gaywan hugged the fathers of Saiyub and Kumar, who had been ready to satisfy him. Each males, aged and unable to work, sat on the identical picket bench.

Kumar’s mom Subhawati arrived later, wearing her greatest, brightly coloured sari, gifted by her daughter. Subhawati, hunched and sunburnt, stood quietly outdoors, till Ghaywan insisted she sit with the menfolk on the porch. Saiyub is from a conservative Muslim household. His sisters and mom stayed inside the home, his mom solely poked her head outdoors to go on plates of meals for lunch.

After the meal, Ghaywan lined up plastic chairs on the Saiyoub household porch. Hung up sheets to dam the sunshine. Arrange his laptop computer. Curious villagers piled in. Saiyub’s mom even drew up a chair.

However one individual refused to look at: Kumar’s mom, Subhawati.

Ghaywan pleaded along with her. “Your son’s story,” he mentioned, “impressed thousands and thousands of individuals.” Possibly if she watched the film, she would see how huge he had develop into in individuals’s hearts, and “possibly it will aid you ultimately to heal.”

Kumar’s mom asks us: “What good will it do me to look at this film?”

The mother of a young man whose death formed the backbone of an Oscar-nominated movie, “Homebound,” on a recent day in their hometown, the northern Indian village of Devari. The movie is based on an a New York Times essay, which told the backstory of an image that went viral during the pandemic in India. The image showed Mohammad Saiyub, a Muslim, cradling his best friend, Amrit Kumar, a Dalit Hindu, on a dusty roadside. Kumar is clearly unwell. The two were there because Kumar was kicked off a truck they were hitching a ride on to get home, nearly 1,000 miles away. The photo initially drew viewers attention because of its tender portrayal of friendship of two Indian migrant workers. It drew attention because it showed the price of the Indian government’s decision to halt most industry and transport in the early days of the pandemic, which led to millions of migrant workers going hungry, and who tried to walk and hitch home, sometimes hundreds of miles away. And then it drew attention because it was the men were Hindu and Muslim, in a country where communal relations have been polarized after a decade of Hindu nationalist rule. Kumar, a Hindu, died shortly after the photo was taken.

Subhawati is the mom of Amrit Kumar, who was on a 1,000-mile journey house together with his childhood pal Mohammad Saiyub. Kumar fell in poor health and later died. Their story impressed the film Homebound. When the director organized a screening for the households of the 2 younger males, Kumar’s mom couldn’t bear to look at.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Diaa Hadid/NPR

It was her son Amrit who saved their bellies full together with his garment manufacturing facility work. Now she works on building websites for a couple of {dollars} a day.

“Amrit used to see my sorrow and my happiness. He took my troubles away. If I watch this movie — and Amrit does not communicate to me, what’s the level?”

In order the opening rating wafted from the porch, of a film about her son’s life and demise, she walked away.