Homebound: Khyatee Kanchan reveals Ishaan Khatter’s speechless moment on set

The spaces characters inhabit say as much about them as the lines they speak. Production designer Khyatee Kanchan believes that, more so in films like Homebound. Director Neeraj Ghaywan’s drama, starring Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa, is centred on two friends from marginalised communities who struggle to make their way home amid the pandemic-induced lockdown. Staying true to the lead characters, who are navigating family expectations and poverty, was the starting point for Kanchan. 

“We talked less about design and more about the characters and the demography they come from,” starts Kanchan. As they shaped rooms that indicated generations of use and economic struggle, in Bhopal, where Homebound was largely shot, she believes the approach further helped the actors become their characters. “When Ishaan walked into his room for the first time, he was speechless because he could feel the character through the space. For instance, his character is into cricket. But we depicted that in a subtle way, the room wasn’t filled with [cricket] posters.”

(From left) Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter in ‘Homebound’

Kanchan is wary of the way cinema can sometimes fetishise deprivation. The production design team was mindful of neither fetishising poverty nor sanitising the visual palette. “Sanitisation in design and visuals is very common, especially for [stories set in] rural India. Since we were aiming for festivals, it was never sanitised for white people or for Indian people. It was true to the storytelling,” she asserts, before noting the bigger challenge. “In the story, [Jethwa’s family is] building a new house — there were many discussions in terms of how it would be. The challenge was how to be subtle. Not overdoing things was something we had to struggle with. It’s important to avoid poverty porn when you show a story like this. Not exaggerating anything was a shared aim across departments.”

What made matters seamless was having Ghaywan, whose politics of representation aligned with hers, as the director. The two first worked together on the 2016 British Airways commercial, Fuelled by Love. She credits him for making Homebound her “most exhilarating project”. She shares, “Neeraj is very open and lets you put forward your point of view. He never misuses his power, and lets everybody be.”