Newly widowed Santosh inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector, Sharma. A riveting mix of social drama, character study, and procedural crime thriller with clear political implications and targeting, the feature length fiction debut of Sandhya Suri, Indian-born British filmmaker, captured the audience in Cannes, making many speculate about an emerging talent from whom we expect a plethora of interesting things. Atmospheric, dark, with a dramatic use of the landscape that cleverly highlights its complex anthropogeography, Santosh is a moral tragedy wrapped in a neo-noir packaging, a film that isn’t afraid to stare into the abyss, reminiscent of the greatest examples of a cinematic genre which, at its most inspiring moments, takes a knife to the bone of sick societies, while avoiding blatant moralism.
Santosh
Santosh
TIFF65: Greek Premiere
Screening Schedule
No physical screenings scheduled. |
- Direction: Sandhya Suri
- Script: Sandhya Suri
- Cinematography: Lennert Hillege
- Editing: Maxime Pozzi-Garcia
- Sound: Etienne Haug, Nikola Medic, Bruno Tarrière
- Music: Luisa Gerstein
- Actors: Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar, Nawal Shukla, Pratibha Awasthy, Prashant Kumar
- Production: Good Chaos
- Producers: Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay, Alan McAlex
- Co-production: Haut et Court, Razor Film
- Co-producers: Carole Scotta, Eliott Khayat, Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul
- Costumes: Bhagyashree Dattatreya Rajurkar
- Production Design: Devika Dave
- Executive producer: Ama Ampadu, Eva Yates, Diarmid Scrimshaw, Lucia Haslauer, Martin Gerhard
- Make Up: Soamaa Goswami
- Format: DCP
- Color: Colour
- Production Country: India, France, United Kingdom, Germany
- Production Year: 2024
- Duration: 127'
- Contact: Mk2 Films
- Awards/Distinctions: Award for International Cinema (Best International Debut) - Jerusalem Film Festival (2024)
Sandhya Suri
Sandhya Suri was born in England and raised in Darlington. After earning a degree in mathematics, Suri worked as a teacher in Japan. Her experiences documenting this period on camera inspired her to study documentary filmmaking at the National Film and Television School. In 2005, Suri's released the documentary I for India detailing her father's experiences as an 20th-century Indian immigrant in the United Kingdom based on his own tape recordings. I for India was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Suri's second film, the silent 2018 documentary Around India with a Movie Camera, used archival British Film Institute footage to explore life in British India. That same year, Suri released the narrative short film The Field, which was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film in 2019. Suri's narrative feature debut, Santosh was selected to screen in the Un Certain Regard portion of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. She first began work on Santosh in 2016 when she was accepted to the Sundance Institute Director's Lab.
Filmography
2005 I for India (doc)
2018 The Field (short)
2024 Santosh
2018 The Field (short)
2024 Santosh
