How did Martin Scorsese get interested in Homebound?
I suppose the film spoke to him, as it did to you. Some emotions, like friendship, transcend language.
Will Scorsese’s presence boost Homebound’s chances of getting us the Oscar?
I don’t think so. If the Oscar comes to us, it would have to be for only one reason: the jury has to be moved by what they see.
Homebound is about the exceptional friendship between a Dalit and a Muslim fellow. What made you choose this story, or did the story choose you?
The credit goes to Somen Mishra, one of our producers of Homebound. I suppose the story chose me. When Basharat Peer reached out to Somen, he shared a piece with me that he wrote for the New York Times, and reading it moved me deeply. I saw in it the seed of something larger, something more profound that I felt compelled to explore—something that speaks to both my personal experience and the world at large.
It feels like a very personalised expression, one could almost feel the punch in the guts?
We often reduce marginalised communities—whether defined by race, caste, religion, region, ideology, or sexuality—to mere statistics. While statistics are important, they can also be dehumanising. Numbers can create distance; they allow us to feel sympathy without responsibility, empathy without accountability. They can mask our apathy.
So are all your films going to touch on the question of the Dalit identity?
So the question becomes: if we don’t tell our own stories, who will? But it’s not like I go looking specifically for stories about caste. Often, the stories find me. My short film Juice, for example, came from observing the dynamics in my own home—it compelled me to question and respond to that status quo.
