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Anas Arif

one battle after another

parzival4.0

Homebound gets this thing about “progress” in India, how it’s always announced like some achievement but on the ground it just looks like people barely managing. Whether if it's promotion, a reunion, a roof that isn’t even fully done and suddenly it’s framed like the system works. It doesn’t, it just lets you survive and then takes credit for that. Even basic dignity feels conditional, like you’re allowed a little, not too much. The harsh daylight in the film makes everything plain, almost blunt nothing hidden, which I liked. But sometimes it’s so clean and composed that the pain doesn’t fully hit, it feels arranged. I’m not even sure if that’s a flaw or the point, maybe that’s what it’s saying that struggle here gets packaged nicely and renamed resilience so everyone can feel okay about it.the film is very unsettling because it doesn’t give you redemption or easy closure. You just watch things go wrong, recognize all of it, and slowly understand that the system was never built to give answers anyway. Neeraj neither doesn’t box it into lockdown cinema, becase the pandemic shows up late, and not even as the main tragedy, more like confirmation that crisis was already normal. By the time COVID enters, Chandan and Shoaib have been worn down by paperwork, joblessness, small humiliations that don’t look dramatic but pile up. Some images stay in your head, a train packed with students which parallels a truck packed with migrants, a piggyback ride that once felt playful turning into something heavy and desperate. It’s like the country keeps repeating the same scene with different faces.sometimes the film felt a bit too arranged almost like it knows it will be watched by people sitting comfortably, able to process all this as “cinema.” But maybe that discomfort is on us, we sit there consuming it, calling it powerful. When the dialogue becomes direct, almost blunt, it doesn’t feel like a lack of subtlety to me, it feels like people who don’t have the luxury to be quiet. The quiet scenes are the ones that hurt more anyway. A face finally breaking after holding it in for years, a mother collapsing into her grief, a friend stepping away after saying something casually cruel, its those those moments the film feels less polished, less careful, more raw, not empathy packaged nicely, just tired tenderness trying to survive. That’s when it really lands, when oppression isn’t symbolic or poetic, it’s just everyday life.2025 Ranked: IndianIndian Filmmaking at International Film Festivals - 2025Since you are here, might as well go through the cuts made by cbfc

Rabbu 🎐4.0

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