At the heart of Bheed (The Divided Crowd), directed and produced by Anubhav Sinha, is India’s ‘Long March Home’—one of the most devastating events in India’s recent history, triggered by the sudden announcement of the national lockdown on March 24, 2020, during the Coronavirus pandemic. It left over 1,00,00,000 (one crore) migrants, especially daily wage earners, desperate: having lost their jobs and homes, and with no buses or trains available, they walked home, many over hundreds of kilometres, across India. If they had to die, at least they would die at home, they said. Sinha is one of India’s most courageous and solid filmmakers, who earlier made Mulk (on Islamophobia) and Article 15 (on caste-based violence). He is one of the very few good Hindi mainstream filmmakers left, still speaking truth to power, while most prefer the relatively shallow eddies of romantic, patriotic or crime dramas. Bheed is theatrically released. Other films on the lockdown include two documentaries, Vinod Kapri’s 1232 km and Mihir Fadnavis’ Lords of Lockdown.

Rajkummar Rao plays Surya Kumar Singh Tikas, a Dalit policeman “in-charge” at a checkpost in the fictional town of Tejpur, where hordes of migrants have landed up. His dilemma: he would rather just let the poor migrants go home, but he must follow orders not to let anyone cross the border, to prevent the virus from spreading. With mass migration tackling internal borders, Sinha draws parallels to the Partition, but several references to this, the prime minister and caste, have been mauled by the Censor Board. Despite this, the film is a defiant, scorching mirror that refuses to lie.