“Shakespeare said, ‘What’s in a name?’ He should come to India and find out,” filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan told Martin Scorsese at a New York event last week, using the line to anchor a candid conversation about Homebound, India’s official entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards.
The remark came as Ghaywan explained how caste, identity and the weight carried by a surname shaped his life and forms the core of Homebound. The film, based on the real story of two young migrant workers forced to walk hundreds of kilometres during India’s 2020 lockdown, is directed by Ghaywan and executive produced by Scorsese.
Scorsese, who has been associated with the project since its scripting stage, said he had “been living with it for about three years” even while immersed in Killers of the Flower Moon. He praised the film’s emotional clarity, its “humanity of these two kids” and Ghaywan’s choice to avoid turning the narrative into a political treatise.
“You deal with joy as much as tragedy,” Scorsese told Ghaywan.
Ghaywan said he approached the story by first confronting his own history. Growing up in a Dalit household, he said he spent decades “masquerading as an upper-caste member” constantly fearful of being “found out”.
In India, he added, a surname can instantly reveal — and define — a person’s place in a centuries-old hierarchy. “We have been socially distanced for 2,000 years,” he said, describing caste discrimination through the metaphor of “social distancing” the society wrongly projects onto the oppressed.
Ghaywan added the real men behind the film’s characters are Mohammed Sayyub and Amrit Kumar, whose ordeal — documented originally in a New York Times article penned by Basharat Peer — opened larger questions about migration, dignity and survival.
“Why do migrants leave their homes?” he asked. “Half a billion people in India are internal migrants, and most come from marginalised communities”.
Scorsese lauded the performances and the immersive realism Ghaywan drew from his cast. The director described taking actors Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa to villages, making them live in character, and assigning each scene its own musical playlist.
The crew, he added, operated on the understanding that skill mattered, but empathy mattered more.
The veteran filmmaker also credited Ghaywan for the film’s tight pacing. “Stay with the boys,” Scorsese recalled advising during the edit, a note that eventually led to trimming entire story threads. Ghaywan said letting go was difficult but essential: “We have to do what works for the film.”
Homebound, co-produced by Apoorva Mehta, Somen Mishra, Melita Toscan du Plantier and others, screened at the New York event with members of the cast and crew present.
For Ghaywan, sitting across Scorsese was “the most meaningful moment” of his career. He revealed that during the year-long development process, the team used a code name for Scorsese — “Bade Pappa” — to keep his involvement secret.
Scorsese said he is eager for American audiences to see the film. “It’s very satisfying that it’s here,” he said. “What you’ve done is extraordinary.”