A recent Hollywood film, Nuremberg, reminds one of the global resistance against authoritarianism. Unlike earlier films of resistance created by the left-wing. Filmmakers from the third world and the Eastern bloc, the new films are sans direct political stands and are more focused on the human mind and the ramifications of events in the immediate society around.

The film, Homebound, appears to be the most sensitive film made in recent times in India, which can truly be called a film of resistance. It is a film about the resistance of two young people, one from the lower caste and another from a minority community member in India, who find their fates are intertwined due to their miserable plight in society.

The film, which was showcased at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and was India's official entry at the Oscars, deals with the plight of two boys bonded by not just friendship, but their status as members of a minority religion and also as Dalits. A bold, sensitive portrayal of their struggles in a pre-Covid North Indian village, ending with the death of the Dalit boy during their journey back home from the workplace during Covid makes it stand out not just in its narrative, but in its sensitive handling of two of the most volatile issues of contemporary India, that of the status of minorities and Dalits in India.

Surprisingly produced by Dharma Productions and of Karan Johar of Kuch kuch hotha hai fame, and has an executive producer in Martin Scorsese, the Hollywood director. Neeraj Ghayawan wrote the film with Sumit Roy and directed the film, which, in normal Hindi film ratings, was a box office failure, collecting only Rs 5 crores, against its production cost of Rs 25 crores, though critics rated it highly.

But what makes the film different, even from the "new wave "films of India of the 1970s, it is direct and with an insider approach to its core theme. Unlike the early Shyam Benegal films, where the urban actors portray the rural flocks and their plight in a clinical way, Neeraj, the filmmaker, gets into the rural landscape of North India, with caste and communal ramifications and also the aspirations of his characters. The film begins with the young crowd in a countryside railway station going for a police constable interview. From degree holders to school finalists, there is a big clamour for such a post as the leading duo say the police post is their ticket out of the underbelly of society as a Dalit and as a Muslim to the power strata.

The scenes of the boys bonding through various scenes and showcasing their shared destiny as underdogs are sensitively and beautifully captured by the filmmaker. The Dalit boy's girlfriend, who persuades him to join the college, only adds to the inherent aspiration of the boy, as well as the disillusionment of Chandan Kumar Valmiki, played by Vishal Jethwa. The Muslim boy, Mohammed Sohaib Ali, played by Ishan Khatter, also struggles with his identity as a minority in his temporary job and an ailing father who needs surgery, refusing to leave the family for a lucrative job in the Middle East.

Both end up in a distant Surat Cloth Mill as workers and live together, sharing their room and fate like many of the workers from the countryside in the industrial town. There is a touching scene of

Chandan's girlfriend, who objected to his leaving college for Surat, showed herself at her boyfriend's birthday in Surat. They both realise their wretched fate and get reconciled in their own way.

Chandan's money gets his family a pucca house by the time he returns to the village in the Covid lockdown, dead, and he also gets the much-awaited police appointment. Sohaib returns to his family with the dead body of his childhood friend. His money earned as a worker in Surat helped with his father's surgery. He holds the police appointment letter of his dead friend, not knowing what to do.

We, the audience, are left with the tragic fate of two boys and their families who are bonded together in their tragedy at the end.

Unlike the propaganda films, there is no social or political grandstanding in Home Bound. The filmmaker put the reality of the narrative as a fate to the characters and as a living reality. The story of the narrative in itself is based on a New York Times article by Basharat Peer from 2020.

The treatment of the film is like that of a hard-hitting Western film, but with all the Indian caste and communal sensitivity of the countryside. The ouster of Chandan's mother and sister from a school as cooks of the mid-day meal scheme due to their lower caste status is the best example to showcase the sensitivity in the film. So is the walking out of Sohaib from the teasing senior colleagues as India defeats Pakistan in a Cricket match, reveals yet another pain point of the Muslims in North India, being accused of being Pakistani sympathisers.

Given the flood of so-called patriotic propaganda films, Homebound finds no mention either at the box office or so far in the awards of the art house film circuit of India. An honour in Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival or entry into the short list of the 98th Academy Awards for the Best International Feature Film award has not yet excited the Indian film world. But Neeraj Ghaywan, as a sensitive filmmaker, is here to stay.

Neeraj came into the films as an assistant to Anurag Kashyap in 2012; unlike his mentor Kashyap, Neeraj is not lost in recreating reality, and his narrative is loaded with nuances, both personal, psychological, and social. Neeraj's first feature film, Masaan, also handled the sensitive issue of caste hierarchies and the tragedies it plays in young people's lives. His sensitive, nuanced handling of caste and communal issues might go a long way in opening a new path in Hindi films for young directors.

Nuances are what are lacking in most Hindi films dealing with such issues of rural societies.

But the cry of an old woman in Jolly LLB 3, who won their eviction in a court of law in the court itself, is a reminder that all is not lost in Hindi films, while narrating the tragedies of the villages. The film has all the makings of a Hindi film industry potboiler with Akshya Kumar in the leading role as a lawyer and hilarious court scenes, but ends with a loud cry for the fate of the villagers affected by development projects across the country. The cry becomes a huge

symbol at the end of the film, as the director shuts down all the extra noises of the court to highlight the strange, tragic, but hopeful plight of the old village lady. Indeed, a resistance film of the villagers, one does not expect from a normal Hindi commercial film, with stars.

Any write-up on films of resistance cannot help but include the English film Nuremberg, a Second World War psychological thriller, on the famous trial of Nazi top honchos after the war. What makes the film different from the other films about the Nuremberg trial, and also the World War 2 films, is its psychological approach to unearth the mind of the Nazi leadership while trying to conquer the world. For that, the director James Vanderbilt based his films on the 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, and made his lead character a psychiatrist assigned to analyse the Nazi top leadership personalities and to avoid the suicide of these men.

U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) does exactly that. Though he could prevent some suicides, he got personally close to Hitler's second man Hermaan Goring incarcerated in Nuremberg jail. They both measure each other and bond as humans, and help each other to help to achieve their individual goals. Goring tries to gain enough ammunition to outwit his trial proceedings, and Kelly takes enough notes to write a book on Goring and the Nazis. When their interests collide, there is an excellent film situation when Goring, played by Russell Crowe, declares to Kelly that he is indeed the book and that Kelly is just a footnote.

Goring and Kelly realise the enormity of the tragedy after witnessing the film footage of concentration camps and wondering how it can happen that millions of people were butchered under the Nazi regime, where Goring was the second in command. The Nazi leader blames it on others handling the Jews' issues, but the trial proves beyond doubt that it was a collective decision, and all the leaders were sentenced to death by hanging.

The film ends with a discussion of Kelly about his book. He declares that what the Nazis did was a stereotype model for all dictators to follow in future. They can kill half the population to control the other half, Kelly declared, much to the irritation of his fellow panellists, who ousted him from the discussion panel.

The film ends as a warning for contemporary times where hate politics tries to achieve just that. Be it in the USA or other countries, many rulers are trying to divide people to gain control of the majority. The film Nuremberg points to that framework of hate politics, which the Nazis successfully tried to put the world into a war. Timely warning when we see war clouds in the Middle East.

(VK Cherian is an author based in New Delhi)