Overview
- Neeraj Ghaywan’s feature arrives in French theaters with visibility from its Cannes berth and industry backing from Dharma Productions.
- Set partly during India’s 2020 lockdown, the film follows a Muslim and a Dalit friend who aim to join the police as a path out of bias and joblessness.
- The script draws on a 2020 New York Times report about two migrant workers forced onto the road by the sudden shutdown, reframed as an immersive fiction without revealing plot turns.
- Reviews highlight a sharp portrait of discrimination and migrant precarity, though L’Humanité faults the final stretch for slipping into easy pathos.
- Ghaywan, himself Dalit and previously honored at Cannes in 2015 for Masaan, places the story in a country where caste was outlawed in 1950 yet continues to shape daily life and access to work.