On Thursday, as the Cannes Film Festival announced its official selection of films for the 2025 edition, to be held from May 13-24, an Indian director found his pride of place a decade since he last went to the festival segment — Un Certain Regard — with Masaan (2015).
Neeraj Ghaywan’s sophomore feature Homebound has found a pride of place amid other contenders like Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great, Morad Mostafa’s Aisha Can’t Fly Away, The Last One for the Road by Francesco Sossai, Meteors by Hubert Charuel, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr, Once Upon A Time In Gaza by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser, A Pale View of the Hills by Kei Ishikawa, Pillion by Harry Lighton and Urchin by Harris Dickinson, among others.
Not much is known about the premise of Homebound yet. Produced by Karan Johar's Dharma Productions in collaboration with Varun Grover and Somesh Mishra, the film features Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa, with a cameo by Janhvi Kapoor. The film has been edited by Nitin Baid, who had also edited Masaan. Kapoor and Khatter had previously worked in Dhadak (2018), the Hindi remake of Nagraj Manjule’s superlative Sairat (2016).
In 2015, Masaan was a pathbreaking film for Hindi cinema that humanised Dalit characters (the untouchable Doms of Benares, or corpse-burners), seen with a sensitive lens, even though those parts were essayed by non-Dalit actors, including Vicky Kaushal in his debut film. The other actors included Richa Chadha, Pankaj Tripathi and Sanjay Mishra. Set in Varanasi, with some memorable music composed by Indian Ocean band and written by Varun Grover, the film won the Un Certain Regard Special Prize and FIPRESCI Prize that year.
Ghaywan was an assistant director on Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) — Kashyap had seen Ghaywan’s short film Shor (Noise) and suggested him to move from the marketing to the creative side of filmmaking. In 2010, after Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan screened at Cannes Un Certain Regard, Kashyap showed the film to Ghaywan, who found a lot of hope after watching it for telling his kind of stories. Ghaywan last made the Radhika Apte-starrer Dalit Buddhist wedding segment The Heart Skipped a Beat, part of Made in Heaven 2, in 2023; in 2021, he directed the Konkona Sensharma-Aditi Rao Hydari-starrer Dalit queer short film Geeli Pucchi (Sloppy Kisses), part of the web anthology Ajeeb Daastaans; he’s directed the Shefali Shah-starrer short film Juice (2017); and co-directed the second season of Sacred Games (2019).
Dalit writer-director Ghaywan counts Marathi filmmaker Nagraj Manjule among his inspiration. Ghaywan’s cinema is known for its sensitive representation of marginalised lives, blending intersectionality and inclusivity, foregrounding the Dalit experience, touching upon gender, caste, and discrimination. “When you get benefits based on your caste (such as reservations), you inherit a persecution complex,” the filmmaker has said in an earlier interview to The Indian Express. And, perhaps, his art founts from, and responds to, that persecution complex. Over time, he has become more confident of his caste identity and in choosing to tell stories around it from his own social location.
The Un Certain Regard category, which recognises the first and second films of promising filmmakers. Last year, Bulgarian-American filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless, with Indian actors Anasuya Sengupta, Omara Shetty and Tanmay Dhanania had premiered in the same section. Sengupta made history by winning the Best Actress prize, the first Indian actor to do so. Sandhya Suri’s Santosh — which has been blocked from releasing in India — starring Shahana Goswami in the lead and Sunita Rajwar, also premiered at Cannes Un Certain Regard 2024 and was Britain’s Oscar entry for 2025.
Meanwhile, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light had its premiere at the Main Competition section last year — 30 years after India last competed for Palme d’Or with Shaji N Karun’s Swaham (1994). The Mumbai-set drama about two two nurses won the Grand Prix, the second big award of the festival, and a first for India. The film released in theatres last year in November and is now available to watch on JioHotstar.
In the past, Un Certain Regard has featured Indian films including Aribam Syam Sharma’s Manipuri film Ishanou (1991), Sandip Ray’s Bengali film Uttoran (1994), Motwane’s Udaan (2010), Gurvinder Singh’s Punjabi film Chauthi Koot (2015) — along with Ghaywan’s Hindi film Masaan — and Nandita Das’ Hindi film Manto (2018).
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