Sandhya Suri’s acclaimed Hindi film 'Santosh', starring Shahana Goswami, has been selected by the British Academy as the UK's submission to the in the international feature film category. The crime thriller created a buzz when it was screened in the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes earlier this year. UK won the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature for the very first time with Jonathan Glazer’s 'The Zone of Interest'.
ADVERTISEMENT British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri has directed Santosh. She is best known for her documentaries "I for India' (2005) and 'Around India with a Movie Camera' (2018). The film is essentially Indian, set in rural northern India, where newly-widowed Santosh inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable.
When an underage girl from the underprivileged section is murdered, Santosh is pulled into the investigation. 'Santosh' stars in the lead, alongside Sunita Rajwar. The score is by Luisa Gerstein, cinematography by Lennert Hillege and editing by Maxime Pozzi-Garcia.
The film was produced by James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay, Mike Goodridge, and Alan McAlex, while executive producers were Ama Ampadu, Martin Gerhard, Lucia Haslauer, Diarmid Scrimshaw, and Eva Yates. It was co-financed by Good Chaos, Razor Film Produktion, Haut et Court, BBC Film, and BFI. Sandhya described the inspiration behind the film in an interview on Cannes Film Festival's website.
She says, "For a long time, I had been searching for a meaningful w.