Poster of the film / Instagram

On paper Neeraj Ghaywan's "Homebound" -- which premiered May 21 at the Cannes film festival -- looks like a typical Bollywood tearjerker.

Two best friends who grew up together in a poor village leave to take on the world, their friendship and mettle tested at every turn.

Also Read: Filmmaker Martin Scorsese joins bollywood film Homebound as executive producer

But this is no average buddy movie.

The moving epic set in northern India around pandemic lockdowns is so much more than that because one of the boys is a Muslim and the other a low-caste Hindu.

Their unbreakable bond, forged in adversity, is the beating heart of the film, which so moved Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese that he got on board to help bring it to the world.

There are millions of such friendships which cross religious and caste divides in India, its director told AFP, "but it has never been shown" before on the big screen.

"Only a handful of films have ever featured Dalit (lower caste) stories and most of those were made by people from the privileged castes," Ghaywan said.

Ghaywan is that very rare beast in Bollywood -- a Dalit director from the lowest rung in the rigid Hindu caste system.

He believes he is the "first acknowledged Dalit behind a camera in the history of Hindi cinema. That's a stunning disparity," he told AFP.

And one that means the stories of the quarter of India's 1.4 billion people who are tribals or come from castes once disparagingly known as "untouchables", are not being seen.

"India and the world really needs to see their stories," said Ghaywan, adding that with such a vast population "it is understandable that they are often talked of as just statistics."

"I myself come from a marginalised background. I am a Dalit. So there's a lot of me in the movie," said Ghaywan, who lives near Mumbai but grew up in the south.

It is also loosely inspired by a heartbreaking real-life tale of poor workers who set out on foot on an epic journey back to their village from the city during the Covid lockdowns.

Ghaywan brought his two leading actors, Bollywood heartthrob Ishaan Khatter and rising star Vishal Jethwa, out to the villages to see the lives of India's poor from the inside.

"We did a long immersive exercise," Ghaywan told AFP. "We got to know people and ate in their homes. It was genuinely such a humbling experience."

Avoiding controversy 

Caste and religious discrimination are highly sensitive subjects in India and the country is currently on edge after four days of fighting with Pakistan following a deadly terror attack in Kashmir last month.

Indian government has often been accused of stoking hatred of Muslims.

Knowing he has to get past India's censors, Ghaywan insisted he has tried to avoid politics or inflaming tensions.

Sandhya Suri's movie "Santosh", which premiered at Cannes last year, still hasn't screened in India despite winning a heap of international awards.

Santosh shone a light on sexism, religious discrimination and corruption in the Indian police as well as the treatment of lower caste people.

"I like to keep politics underneath the narrative, because if your politics supersedes the story it's just propaganda. Even good propaganda is propaganda. It's not cinema," Ghaywan added.

Emotion, however, holds no fear for Ghaywan.

"I embrace it. I make no apologies for it. We Indians are an emotional people and this is a story that brings up a lot of them," he explained.

Industry insiders have "bawled and bawled" at private screenings of the film, he told AFP, with Scorsese saying that "Neeraj has made a beautifully crafted film that's a significant contribution to Indian cinema."

He said he wasn't surprised that Cannes snapped it up for its secondary "Certain Regard" selection after Ghaywan won two prizes there in 2015 with his debut film "Masaan".

Flattered as he is, Ghaywan said that "I did not make the movie for festivals" or arthouse audiences.

"The most important thing is that it is seen in India," he told AFP.

Ghaywan stressed that "Homebound" is "attacking no one", with its story even set "in a fictional state".

India is very much in the spotlight at Cannes with Satyajit Ray's "Days and Nights in the Forest" getting a gala screening after Hollywood director Wes Anderson helped pay for the restoration of the 1970 masterpiece.