‘Homebound’ Remembers What a Nation Wants to Forget

In May 2020, two months into India’s lockdown, journalist Basharat Peer came across a photograph that captured the crisis with devastating clarity. It showed two migrant workers on a Madhya Pradesh highway — one lying unconscious from heatstroke, the other hovering over him, scanning for signs of life. The image was a moment of tenderness amid national neglect. Intrigued and unsettled, Peer investigated the story behind the photo and found that Amrit Kumar, a 24-year-old Dalit worker, and Mohammad Saiyub, a 22-year-old Muslim worker, were childhood friends returning home after the suspension of their factory jobs. Only one made it back.

In the hands of almost any other, a film adaptation might have focused more on the journey’s brutality. That telling wouldn’t have been wrong, but would have reduced Amrit and Saiyub to statistics. Like Peer, filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan gives the two men texture, tenderness, anger, and a life before the headline. He also expands Peer’s reporting, examining what it means for the marginalized to struggle, survive, and belong in an India where caste and religion still dictate whose life matters, distinctions the pandemic only amplified. The result is a film that is both deeply political and achingly human.