Emerging after over a decade of development, Santosh is Sandhya Suri’s first narrative feature after a career in documentary. Shortlisted for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, representing the UK, the film is inspired by a real program in India where widows are offered their late husband’s jobs to sustain their livelihoods. The story follows the titular Santosh, played with remarkable nuance by Shahana Goswami, as a quiet young woman who steps into her late husband’s role as a police officer. Soon, she takes on a harrowing case––the rape and murder of a teenage girl––guided by a seemingly virtuous mentor, Inspector Geeta Sharma, portrayed with an electrifying charge by Sunita Rajwar.
Both a gripping crime thriller and a poignant character study, Santosh operates in the delicate space between realism and genre storytelling. With her unflinching camera, Suri captures Santosh’s transformation with silences, gestures, and glances that speak volumes. Moments of visual poetry punctuate the narrative: the washing of a bloodied uniform, statues veiled in cloth, the charged removal of a nose ring. These charged moments, intertwined with the gritty, overarching plot, result in a gripping journey through moral ambiguity, where questions of agency and complicity haunt both Santosh and the viewer, building to a chilling climax.
Ahead of the film’s opening this Friday, I chatted over Zoom with Suri about her casting approach, the way she crafted the protagonist’s relationship with her on-screen mentor, and her collaboration with her art department.
The Film Stage: I was particularly struck by Shahana Goswami’s performance––there’s such a cerebral quality to her acting. When you watch her, it feels like you can see her thinking. Can you talk about your experience directing her?
Sandhya Suri: Thank you! It’s all in the casting and Shahana was just perfect for the role. She has this complexity which I wished for in Santosh. Santosh wasn’t going to be just an innocent, wide-eyed character, but rather someone with hunger and a certain ambition. She was someone in search of status, having lost it as a wife. She also has this trajectory of her grief which she has to carry through the whole film while she’s exploring, while she’s discovering. This empowerment and this love for her husband––that’s a lot to carry. And I felt that Shahana was able to hold all of that. Very quickly, Shahana tuned into how light of a touch I wanted her performance to have.
Could you talk about Sunita Rajwar’s performance as Inspector Sharma and how your approach differed between the two women?
Yes, a lot was about the chemistry test. I looked at various chemistry tests once Shahana was cast. What I loved about Sunita was her vulnerability and humanity, which undercuts Sharma’s stern, matriarchal role. She’s actually quite a bubbly person. She’s known for playing a lot of comedic roles and she gives this flip side to Sharma, which brings a round edge to her character. She would often ask, “Is this too much?” We worked together to find that balance. We also had a lot of conversations about Sharma’s backstory––what she’d been through, where she was at, and how that fed into her feelings for and her relationship with Santosh.
Santosh team at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. © Joachim Tournebize / FDC
I was struck that the first word in the film is “mommy.” I’ve noticed a recurring theme this year in films like The Seed of the Sacred Fig: the frustration and disconnect between mothers and daughters, particularly across generations. How did you approach that dynamic and how were you thinking about the generational gap?
I wanted Sharma to be a very different type of woman than the ones that Santosh had been exposed to. She’s someone who sees things in Santosh and praises her and validates her in a way that her mother never has. It was about strengthening the bond that she would find when she joined the police and feeling this alienation at the beginning of the film, when she has nowhere to go. It’s about Santosh choosing whether to stay in the domestic space for the rest of her days or to go and try to thrive somewhere else. And it’s about that hunger, that feeling of not being the same. It’s that slight outsider role, which I think having had a love marriage and finding her husband fulfilled for her. But being put back into the family dynamic where she doesn’t quite fit in and has no status, pushes––or pulls––her in a different direction, toward the police.
I also noticed how costumes play such a pivotal role. Early on, Santosh dons her husband’s uniform, signaling a new chapter. And there’s this visual contrast between the sari and the policeman’s uniform. Can you talk about your collaboration with your costume designer Bhagyashree Dattatreya Rajurkar?
You know, it’s so interesting––when you know that someone’s going to be wearing a police uniform for most of the film, the things that they’re wearing when they’re not wearing that uniform feel so much more meaningful. I felt that Shahana was so iconic as Santosh in that uniform; she wears it so well. I had many discussions with costume about how the police uniforms were stitched together and crafted. Because in India you actually get your uniform made yourself, usually with police tailors. And we were also conscious that in Bollywood, with the portrayal of female police officers, they’re usually wearing a uniform that’s very sexy––you know, like a super-tight blouse––and obviously we didn’t want that. So there was more discussions than you might think about the actual uniforms.
Then there was also that moment where we see Sharma in a sari, which feels like quite a shock. She feels like a different person. Since we haven’t seen her in that way in the film, I feel like that sari carries significant weight and adds a lot of pathos to her character in that moment. Shahana is briefly seen as a wife before we learn she has become a widow. There’s also an important discussion in the film about jewelry––what she can wear as a wife, but not as a widow––which is an ongoing theme in the film as well.
And that attention to detail extends to the production design. I was struck by the ornate, colorful nature of Santosh’s home early on and then the scene where she’s examining the murdered girl’s room––trinkets, photos on the wall. How did you approach capturing these spaces?
I was so impressed by the work of my production designer [Devika Dave]––she’s absolutely incredible. I had been watching a lot of Indian films and serials, and I often found the production design too tidy, too organized, and overly constructed. I was searching for something that felt real, always guided by this internal detector for authenticity.
Like any great production designer, she did extensive research and incorporated elements from the location, neighbors, and objects that naturally belonged to the space. She never felt the need to overdesign or overcrowd anything. I was so impressed by how true her work remained to the essence of what I was trying to capture. For me, it was all about sensibility––returning to the research, the places I’d been, and the emotions I wanted to evoke. She shared that sensibility, and it showed in every detail of her work.
The film also has such a distinct visual style––immersive yet precise. How did you approach narrative filmmaking, and did any documentary techniques influence your approach?
For me, the allure of cinema––especially as someone who also writes––is in its economy and rigor. I love how much a single cut can convey and the challenge of being as precise as possible. I aimed for a filmmaking style that is meticulously crafted but doesn’t draw attention to itself––neither through the soundscaping nor the visuals. The goal was to create an experience that allows the viewer to be fully immersed in the space. This also meant the absence of a score, as the idea was to place the audience right alongside Santosh, letting them live through her experiences as closely as possible. It’s about using the tools of cinema to their fullest potential without overdoing it.
Speaking of your transition from documentary to narrative, your earlier narrative short The Field was very romantic. Do you see Santosh as a romance in any sense?
No, I don’t think so. The Field was a very different piece of work. At some point I had already written Santosh and secured quite a bit of funding for it. But I realized I knew very little about fiction filmmaking and needed to understand how I felt about it––if I could do it and how I related to it. I knew I wanted to make a short film, but I didn’t want it to be a proof of concept for Santosh because I couldn’t find a way to adapt that story to the short format. So I set that idea aside and instead came up with a completely different concept for a short. It was something non-verbal, very visual, and quite beautiful. That became my first experience with fiction, though it had a very different feel.
What’s interesting, though, is both projects have this emotional closeness between the female leads. Both are negotiating difficult circumstances. From the outside, they might appear as victims or powerless, but they are constantly strategizing, maneuvering within the constraints of their situations. It’s like they’re both playing emotional chess, maneuvering within their limits.
I know your next project is adapting a J.G. Ballard novella. Was this a deliberate choice to explore sci-fi or a new genre, or is it something you’ve always wanted to try?
No, it’s never about trying a new genre for the sake of it. It’s about finding something that resonates deeply, something I can build on. Once that connection is in place I can navigate all the other hurdles and lessons that come with creating another project.
Santosh is now in limited release.