MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Bollywood has been churning out movies that echo India's dominant Hindu nationalist mood...
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MARTIN: ...Often featuring macho Hindu men fighting Muslims...
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, speaking Hindi).
MARTIN: ...Which has made the rise of one Indian movie remarkable, according to critics. NPR's Diaa Hadid reports.
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DIAA HADID, BYLINE: The movie "Homebound" is about two men on India's margins. One is a Muslim, the other a Dalit - a Hindu caste once known as untouchables.
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VISHAL JETHWA: (As Chandan Kumar Valmiki, speaking Hindi).
ISHAAN KHATTER: (As Mohammed Shoaib Ali, speaking Hindi).
HADID: They're best friends who wind up in India's sweaty garment factories, and amid the upheaval of the pandemic, they try to get home. "Homebound" is based on a pandemic-era photo that went viral. It's of two men on a roadside. One man is cradling the other man on his lap. He's clearly unwell. Those two men are Mohammad Saiyub, a Muslim, and Amrit Kumar, a Dalit. They were garment factory workers. That image captured them as they were trying to get home after the prime minister, Narendra Modi, shut down most industries and transport to prevent the spread of the virus. But with no work...
JAYATI GHOSH: People started starving in the cities. Within a week, you had people somehow trying to leave.
HADID: Economist Jayati Ghosh researched India's COVID response. She says some 80 million migrant workers tried to return home, walking and hitching rides.
GHOSH: Even thinking of it today makes me quake in anger.
HADID: Migrants died en route, like the man in that viral photo, Amrit Kumar. We meet his friend Mohammad Saiyub in a teahouse in a crowded Mumbai quarter.
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HADID: He tells us his friend died of heat exhaustion.
MOHAMMAD SAIYUB: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: Saiyub says the day that photo was taken, he and Kumar had hitched a ride with a truck driver. But when Kumar developed a fever, he was told to get down off the truck.
SAIYUB: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: The driver was worried he had COVID. So Saiyub left with his friend.
SAIYUB: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: They sat by the roadside, waiting for help. And that's when someone took their photo.
SAIYUB: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: Saiyub did make it home with his friend's body.
SAIYUB: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: Saiyub says, "my blood is Kumar's and Kumar's blood is mine. We were friends like that." The backstory of the young men was sketched out by writer Basharat Peer in a New York Times essay in 2020. Filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan read the essay, and he was drawn in by that tender friendship between a Muslim and a Dalit.
NEERAJ GHAYWAN: I think that is what was very striking about this story.
HADID: A striking friendship because it seemed so unlikely in modern-day India, where Muslims are often vilified by the country's Hindu nationalist government. So Ghaywan made "Homebound." Martin Scorsese backed it, giving it international heft, and it got a nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes.
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HADID: Then...
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: "Homebound" has been selected as India's official entry to the Oscars.
HADID: That's Indian outlet NDTV. But it didn't win. After all the excitement died down, Ghaywan set about screening the movie in the one place that he said really mattered - in Devari, the dusty hamlet that Kumar and Saiyub came from.
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HADID: Ghaywan hugged the fathers of Kumar and Saiyub and invited us all to lunch.
GHAYWAN: Please help yourself.
HADID: The food was cleared away and Ghaywan lined up plastic chairs on the Saiyub family porch, hung up sheets to block the light, set up his laptop. Curious villagers piled in.
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HADID: But one person refused to watch - Amrit Kumar's mother, Subhawati. Ghaywan pleaded with her.
GHAYWAN: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: He says he told Kumar's mother, your son inspired millions of people. Maybe watching his story...
GHAYWAN: Maybe this will help you in some way to heal.
SUBHAWATI: (Speaking Bhojpuri).
HADID: But Kumar's mother asks us, "what good will it do me to watch this movie?"
SUBHAWATI: (Speaking Bhojpuri).
HADID: She says it was her son who kept their bellies full with his garment factory work. Now she labors on construction sites for a few dollars a day. She says, "Amrit took my troubles away. He saw my sadness and my happiness. If I watch this film and Amrit doesn't speak to me, what is the point?"
SUBHAWATI: (Speaking Bhojpuri).
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Vocalizing).
HADID: So as the opening score wafted from the porch of a movie about her son's life and death...
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, cheering).
HADID: ...She walked away.
Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Devari.
(SOUNDBITE OF NUJABES AND SHING02 SONG, "LUV(SIC) PART 2") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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