When Bollywood titan Karan Johar‘s Dharma Productions backs a movie exploring caste and spiritual discrimination in rural India with Martin Scorsese as govt producer, cinema historical past will get rewritten.
“Homebound,” Neeraj Ghaywan’s long-awaited sophomore characteristic, produced by Johar together with Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta, Somen Mishra, co-produced by Marijke deSouza and Melita Toscan Du Plantier and govt produced by Scorsese and Pravin Khairnar, isn’t simply heading to Cannes’ Un Certain Regard part — it’s smashing business conventions about who will get to inform which tales and how far they will journey.
The unlikely artistic alliance between Bollywood’s glossiest producer, an indie filmmaker with uncompromising social imaginative and prescient, and cinema’s most revered residing director has yielded an anticipated pageant look.
Ghaywan’s 2015 debut “Masaan” had its world premiere at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand the place it received each 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,” determined to interrupt free from the load of their marginalized identities, two childhood mates from a North Indian village – Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa) – push towards a world stacked towards them. Convinced {that a} police constable’s job will deliver them the dignity they’ve lengthy been denied, they chase it with urgency and hope. Chandan meets Sudha Bharti (Janhvi Kapoor), who urges him to pursue training as a substitute. Meanwhile Shoaib struggles together with his monetary burdens worsened by his father’s ailment. Bound by brotherhood, they confront the disillusionment of a system that failed them.
Scorsese’s artistic affect started 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 constructed its empire on shiny, star-studded blockbusters, “Homebound” represents the continuation of a less-recognized facet of his firm’s work – one which has included pageant favorites and critically acclaimed titles that push boundaries.
“I don’t know why we get slotted,” Johar says with a touch 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” particularly, Johar’s reply is disarmingly easy: “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 movie stars next-gen abilities Ishaan Khatter (Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple”), Janhvi Kapoor (“Devara Part 1”) – each from movie households – alongside Vishal Jethwa (“Tiger 3”). For a movie exploring marginalization and social inequity, casting “star kids” may appear counterintuitive, however each filmmakers insist the actors’ dedication 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 seek for Chandan was significantly in depth. “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 high 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 movie represented a change each onscreen and off. Ghaywan is especially protecting of the actor who has confronted 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” throughout 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 towards caste discrimination, redefined the nation’s authorized and social framework.
Johar provides that for Kapoor, the expertise was extra therapeutic than skilled: “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 second throughout this course of crystallized the movie’s function 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 full artistic management: “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 movie tackles delicate subjects of caste and faith in India, and regardless of tackling divisive points, each males reject the notion their movie 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 group himself, provides: “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 formally chosen movie at Cannes represents a end result. “To me, it’s the holy grail of world cinema, literally the temple of world cinema,” he says with attribute ardour. “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 movie was a particular 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 provides.
Ghaywan, returning to Cannes after a decade, displays 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 obvious. “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.”
Ghaywan is represented by Tulsea.
Paradise City Sales is dealing with worldwide gross sales for “Homebound,” with WME Independent representing North American rights.
