British-Indian Director Sandhya Suri’s Crime Thriller ‘Santosh’ on Oscar Shortlist for Best International Feature Film
- U.K’s submission to the Academy Awards is about a young Hindu widow who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable thanks to a government scheme.
British-Indian director Sandhya Suri’s new crime thriller “Santosh” has been picked by the Academy Awards for its shortlist for Best International Feature Film of the year. U.K.’s official entry is one of only 15 films selected for the Oscar shortlist in this category out of 85 total films submitted by countries all around the world.
India’s entry “’Laapataa Ladies,” directed by Kiran Rao, didn’t make the cut. Other films that made the shortlist include Brazil’s “I’m Still Here,” Canada’s “Universal Language,” Czech Republic’s “Waves,” Denmark’s ‘The Girl With the Needle,” Ireland’s “Kneecap,” France’s “Emilia Perez,” Germany’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” and Iceland’s “Touch.”
“Santosh” stars Shahana Goswami in the titular role, a young Hindu widow who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable thanks to a government scheme. She finds herself caught up in institutional corruption even as she is taken under the wing of a rough-edged veteran detective, Inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), on a murder case involving a teenage girl from the lower caste Dalit community.
The film recently won two British Independent Film Awards for Best Screenplay and Breakthrough Producers after making its global premiere in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Other festival berths have included MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, IFFI Goa International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, among a host of others.
Suri, who’s background is firmly in documentaries told The Hollywood Reporter that “Santosh” was going to be just that — “a forensic look at the rife violence against women in India, the deeply embedded corruption within its police force and the powerless women forced to watch on.” But she “couldn’t figure out how to do it as a documentary form because it was just too horrific,” she told the entertainment portal. “I dropped the project.”
But it was t”he brutal and shocking” case of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh, who was gang raped by the driver of the bus she was traveling on and five accomplices in Delhi in 2012, that changed everything for Suri. She said the “Nirbhaya” case provided her with “an entirely different angle to approach her film from: the female police officers caught between country and community.”
“Santosh” has already had a successful theatrical release in France, by Haut Et Court Distribution. The film is gearing up for its U.S. release via Metrograph on December 27. Vertigo and Civic Studios are releasing in the UK on March 21, 2025.
Nominations voting begins on Jan. 8, 2025, and concludes on Jan. 12. Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on Jan. 17. The 2025 Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, and will air live on ABC and stream on Hulu.