Between office deadlines, traffic, and trying to build a life of your own, home can slowly become a place you visit instead of a place you live.
Then the festive season arrives, and suddenly the distance between where you live and where you belong feels a little more real.
A particular kind of homesickness comes with growing up and moving away.
You leave home for college.
Then a job.
Then another opportunity.
Somewhere between meetings, rent, and weekend plans, the place you once couldn’t wait to leave becomes the place you can’t wait to return to.
For Pune’s young working crowd, it is a familiar feeling.
This emotional space is precisely what makes Magazine, an upcoming Marathi feature film, particularly relevant ahead of Diwali.
What makes the film’s journey even more relatable is that its makers haven’t exactly followed the conventional route to cinema either.
Pune-based couple Shubham Sanjay Shevade and Aparna Kulkarni made Magazine while continuing their full-time careers.
Shubham works with an AdTech multinational, while Aparna is a government-sector bank manager.
In other words, they didn’t quit their jobs to chase a dream.
They chased it alongside them.
For Shubham, who studied filmmaking in Los Angeles, Magazine marks his Marathi feature directorial debut.
For Aparna, it is her first production. Perhaps that makes their journey especially relatable to a generation learning to make room for its dreams alongside everything else.
The 9-to-5 dream
The idea of pursuing a creative dream often comes wrapped in a familiar fantasy: quit everything and take the leap.
But that is a luxury most young professionals cannot afford.
Despite this everyday reality, the couple spent almost three years developing and producing the film without stepping away from their professional lives while embracing the challenges of an independent production.
“You need a certain amount of irrational optimism to make an independent film,” Shubham says.
“There were definitely moments when we didn’t know what the next step would be. But we kept moving because we believed the film would eventually find its audience.”
For a generation accustomed to putting passion projects between responsibilities, that journey may be as relatable as the film itself.
And while Magazine is rooted in Marathi culture, its larger appeal lies in a feeling that travels much further: the strange distance that can grow between the life you are building and the place where your story began.
ALSO READ : Read More Movie Stories
Why it could hit differently this Diwali
For young professionals living away from their hometowns, Diwali has a way of making that distance feel more obvious.
Train tickets disappear, flights get expensive, family WhatsApp groups suddenly become more active, and eventually, many of us make the journey home.
For Shubham, releasing the film around Diwali felt like a natural extension of that annual ritual.
“Diwali is naturally a time when people think about going home,” he says.
“We felt Magazine could become part of that experience, not necessarily because everyone will relate to the exact story, but because the feeling of being away from home is something many young people understand.”
That distinction is important. Magazine isn’t asking everyone to see their own life in one particular story.
Instead, it hopes audiences recognize a feeling, the realization that independence and belonging don’t always have to exist on opposite sides of the same equation.
Aparna sees it slightly differently.
“It’s not really a film about simply going back home,” she says.
“It’s about what you discover when you do.”
And perhaps that’s why its pre-Diwali release feels particularly fitting.
Going home isn’t always about nostalgia. Sometimes, it is about seeing familiar people, places, and memories from a completely different perspective.
ALSO READ : Explore movie reviews, film festivals and more on Campus Times Pune.
From an independent dream to audiences around the world
What began as an independent passion project has already traveled far beyond where its journey started.
The film has received appreciation at special screenings in Berlin, Stuttgart, Sydney, and several cities across India, where audiences responded to its emotionally grounded storytelling and distinct voice.
For a first-time Marathi feature made outside the traditional studio system, that journey is a story in itself.
The film grew through the support of people who believed in the project, contributing their time, expertise, and encouragement to bring it to life.
That collective spirit also reflects what the makers mean when they describe Magazine as a Gen Z Marathi film.
Not simply a film about young people, but one shaped by a generation figuring out how to carry forward a legacy and tradition while giving it their own spin.
Now, as the film prepares for its theatrical release, it arrives at a moment when millions will be preparing for their own journeys home.
Whether you watch it because you love cinema, want to support an independent film, are drawn to its homecoming spirit, or simply haven’t thought about home in a while, Magazine arrives with a question that may feel particularly relevant this festive season:
After spending so much time building a life away from home, what happens when you finally turn around and look back?
Magazine releases in theatres on October 23, 2026.
