Photo Courtesy: nenow
Guwahati: Filmmaker Achinta Shankar tries to contrast urban pressure with rural freedom in his Assamese feature, Homework. The film follows a city-dwelling child during a summer visit to his grandparents. He spends his days climbing trees and planting paddy. He finds joy in village life. The story spans one hour and 40 minutes, yet it barely sustains that length.
The film plays like a travel vlog. It functions as a checklist of rural activities rather than a developed narrative. The cinematography fails to impress, resembling a low-budget production. It struggles to capture the lush surroundings of the village. The pacing drags, making the runtime feel far longer than it is.
Conflict only emerges when the child falls ill near the end of his vacation. His parents blame the grandparents for his condition and worry about his incomplete school assignments. The grandfather defends the household, claiming, "homework is meant to be practice, not pressure, and effectively writes the moral at the end of a fable in bold ink." He reveals the boy already finished his schoolwork during evening study sessions.
Shankar portrays the International School of Guwahati as a place of intimidation. He depicts teachers as caricatures obsessed with deadlines. The film relies on a rigid binary between good rural life and bad urban existence. It offers little insight into the complexities of either world.
The project faced multiple release delays. It finally hit theaters on May 15, 2026, in Assamese and Hindi. It ran for seven weeks, narrowly outpacing the competition. The cast features Debajit Majumder, Hiranya Deka, and Rimpi Das, among others. Zubeen Garg makes his final big-screen appearance in a musical segment.
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