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| Sandhya Suri: संतोष / Santosh (GB/DE/FR 2024). |
संतोष
Made possible by a donation from Carol Bobo.
Language: Hindi. Also Urdu? English subtitles by Sandhya Suri.
Loc: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Festival premiere: 20 May 2024 Cannes (Un certain regard).
Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2024.
In person: Sandhya Suri.
Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "After the shy, sheltered Santosh (Shahana Goswami) is widowed—her husband was a policeman killed during a riot—she assumes his job as a constable, thanks to a government policy: “appointment on compassionate grounds.” Mentored by Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a tough older woman police inspector, Santosh is soon assigned a particularly brutal sexual murder case and finds herself torn between the excitement of a profound new challenge and the grim realization that the police force she works for is hopelessly sexist and corrupt. Writer-director Sandhya Suri (whose prior short film THE FIELD, TFF 2018, was an international sensation) skillfully fuses a tense police procedural with a perceptive drama of a woman’s spiritual awakening. Suri offers a clear-eyed, vibrant view of life in a rural Northern Indian village, and Goswami’s quietly luminous performance as a woman discovering her fierceness and resolve makes every step of her heroine’s journey poignant and memorable." –Larry Gross (U.K.-Germany-France, 2024, 127 min)
AA: Sandhya Suri's Santosh is a masterpiece, one of the great films of the year 2024.
A detective story, a police procedural, a coming of age story of a young widow.
After the death of her policeman husband, Santosh, discriminated by his family, inherits his job and gets to investigate the murder case of a 15-year-old girl, Devika, belonging to the Dalit, the "untouchables" outside the main caste system.
Santosh rapidly proves skillful and finds out that Devika's boyfriend was the young Muslim Salim. Santosh tracks down the elusive Salim in the jungle of the city.
Together with her senior policewoman partner Sharma they subject Salim to "enhanced interrogation methods" torturing him brutally and mercilessly until he dies. Santosh contributes with over-enthusiastic whipping, probably being the one who finally kills him.
Case closed? Santosh is disturbed by the ubiquitous anti-Muslim racism among the police, also in Sharma's attitude. Racism is present as heavily as a pervasive misogyny. The hard-boiled Sharma has learned to weather it and fights in her own brutal way (perhaps abusing her suspects as scapegoats for her feminist rampage of revenge), and Santosh seems to follow her in her Bildungsroman.
Back at the village well where the gang-raped and mutilated corpse of Devika was found, Santosh learns that the well is being constantly sabotaged by the power elite, and candid remarks of a little daughter of theirs help Santosh understand that Salim was innocent and she is staring in the eyes of the true rapists and murderers.
Meanwhile, Sharma has been fired. This was not the first time that a suspect of hers was found having "hanged himself". Santosh has become a celebrity detective. But she now leaves two rings (retrieved from the bodies of Devika and Salim) to Devika's family. In a gesture parallel to High Noon, The Chase and Dirty Harry where the sheriff / inspector drops his badge in the finale, Santosh leaves her police unifrom (tailored from the one she inherited from her husband) and boards a train to a new destination.
As a detective story, Santosh succeeds, and the multiple issues of misogyny, racism and caste discrimination unfold organically from the plot. The characters are complex and compelling, and the performances are unique and original. This is the first fiction feature of Sandhya Suri, and she takes full advantage of her experience as a documentarist in creating a vivid picture of life in Lucknow.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SANDHYA SURI INTERVIEW FOR CANNES:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SANDHYA SURI INTERVIEW FOR CANNES:
Santosh, Sandhya Suri’s vision
Official Selection
By Benoit Pavan, published on 20.05.2024
SANTOSH
In Santosh, presented at Un Certain Regard, Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri follows a young widow who, having inherited her husband’s position in the police force, finds herself plunged into a tortuous investigation alongside an authoritarian inspector.
What inspired you to begin work on this film?
For a long time, I had been searching for a meaningful way to talk about violence against women. I was in India researching and working with various NGOs when I came across an image. There were nationwide protests following the Nirbhaya gang rape case and this was an image from Delhi of a huge crowd of angry female protestors, faces contorted with rage, and a line of female police officers, forcing them back. One of them had such an enigmatic expression. I was fascinated by her. To explore this violence and her power within it felt exciting. Once I started to research female police constables I learnt of the government scheme of ‘appointment on compassionate grounds’ in which eligible dependents of deceased police officers can inherit their jobs. During my research, I spent time with many such widows. Some had previously led very sheltered lives, never even leaving the house without their husband or a relative until they started their police training. I was struck by the journey from housewife to widow to policewoman. That was a journey I wanted to write about and one I wanted to watch.
Please describe your working method and the atmosphere on set.
On set the atmosphere was sweaty, focused, and about hard work. I am particularly passionate about sound and, knowing India, I knew what we might come up against in terms of the unstoppable noise of daily life. My boom operator Shashi was used to years of negotiation with Indian street life. He kept a box of lollipops always handy for noisy schoolchildren and one day did indeed save a scene that way. Victory was short-lived, though, when, the next day, we embarked upon the darkest sequence of the film to a surprise soundtrack of religious songs blaring over the village speakers!
Please share a few words about your actors.
In Shahana I had just what I was looking for, the right mix of hardness and sweetness, anger held within restraint, energy and a hunger I always saw in Santosh, a wanting for something more. She delivered all these things so superbly on set with professionalism and good energy and was super easy to work with. Sunita brought us a really human Sharma, not an archetype. Her face delivers so much vulnerability. I loved that layer she brought. Sharma I feel is ultimately unknowable; what she knows, how much she even believes her own rhetoric is up for debate and Sunita played that beautifully.
What did you learn during the course of making this film?
Coming from the world of documentaries, filming Santosh was about learning to feel safe in fiction, seeing where to find a home on set. This film was a long time in the making and what really helped to keep shooting manageable was knowing the story so well and having done solid research. They were my roots through which to filter all the questions and decisions. I learnt that I have quite a high tolerance for lack of sleep and that I won’t make choices which feel wrong just because we’re under time pressure.
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