Neeraj Ghaywan and the Meaning of Homebound

Neeraj Ghaywan's 2025 film Homebound has a title that points to a theme in his work: where people come from and what it costs them to leave. This piece draws on his Wikipedia biography, the Cannes festival page for the film and a Variety report on its Oscar submission.

Hyderabad and a corporate job

According to the biography, Ghaywan was born in 1980 to a Dalit Marathi family from Maharashtra and was brought up in Hyderabad. His father was a research scientist and his mother ran a garment store. He went to Kendriya Vidyalaya Shivrampally, completed a degree in electrical engineering at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology in 2002, and then an MBA in marketing at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Pune.

He worked as an engineer at UTV New Media, Hindustan Times and Tech Mahindra. Dissatisfied with corporate life, he began writing as a film critic for the web portal [Passionforcinema.com](http://Passionforcinema.com), and that interest, he says, grew into a passion encouraged by the director Anurag Kashyap.

Short films and an apprenticeship

His first short film, Independence, was shortlisted in 2010 for the online one-minute festival PFCOne. He assisted Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) and Ugly (2013), directing the short films Shor and Epiphany in between, and calls Kashyap his mentor.

Masaan

In January 2014 a screenplay he co-wrote with Varun Grover, Fly Away Solo, won the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. It became Masaan (2015), which was screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2015 and won two awards, including the FIPRESCI Prize. The biography says it holds a 92 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 13 reviews and that The New York Times called it a leading example of increased realism in Indian cinema. He received the Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director at the 63rd National Film Awards.

Short films, series and anthologies

His 2017 short Juice, about gender politics in middle-class Indian households with Shefali Shah, won the Filmfare Award for Best Short Film-Fiction. In 2019 he replaced Vikramaditya Motwane as co-director with Kashyap on Sacred Games season 2. He directed Geeli Pucchi, with Aditi Rao Hydari and Konkona Sen Sharma, in the anthology Ajeeb Daastaans (2021), and an episode of Made in Heaven season 2 in 2023.

Homebound

Homebound, according to the Cannes page, follows two childhood friends from a small North Indian village who chase a police job that promises the dignity they have long been denied, while mounting desperation threatens their bond. It stars Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor, and Ghaywan wrote the screenplay. It premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025. Variety reported that it was inspired by Basharat Peer's 2020 New York Times essay "Taking Amrit Home", and that the Film Federation of India chose it as India's submission to the international feature film category at the 98th Academy Awards, announced on 19 September 2025. Variety adds that Martin Scorsese is among its executive producers and that it came second runner-up for the TIFF People's Choice Award. Ghaywan told Variety it was "rooted in the love for our land and our people".

A note on sources

The Wikipedia biography predates Homebound, so the film's details come from Cannes and Variety. How the film fared after the Oscar submission is not covered here.

Sources

*Cover photo: Kacy Bao, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).*