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Oscars 2025: Sandhya Suri's Hindi crime drama Santosh starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar selected as UK's official entry
Sandhya Suri's Hindi-lingual film Santosh has been chosen as the UK's official entry to the 97th Academy Awards. It is a police procedural drama starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar.
Days after Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies was selected as India’s official entry for the 97th Academy Awards, another Hindi-lingual film has made its way to the Oscars 2025. Sandhya Suri’s critically acclaimed police procedural drama titled Santosh has been chosen by the United Kingdom as their official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the global award show.
Santosh, starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar, was selected by BAFTA, an organisation appointed by the American Academy specifically to choose the UK’s submission. Variety opines that this move might add some pressure on team Santosh as the U.K. won their first international feature Oscar earlier this year with Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.
The eligibility criteria for this category was that a British film must be predominantly non-English language and released theatrically outside of the US between 1 November 2023 and 30 September 2024. Santosh recently also had its debut world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is the directorial feature debut of Suri, who previously made documentaries like I for India and Around India with a Movie Camera.
Set in rural northern India, the tale revolves around newly-widowed Santosh, who gets to inherit her late husband’s job as a police constable. A case appears when an underage girl from a lower caste is brutally murdered. Santosh is roped into the investigation by a charismatic feminist inspector. The investigative thriller also stars Sanjay Bishnoi, Kushal Dubey, Nawal Shukla, and Pratibha Awasthi in key roles.
For those who are still wondering how Santosh became eligible for selection in the UK, it is because the movie had a wide release in that country and is an international co-production of the United Kingdom (predominantly), India, Germany, and France. The film is bankrolled by Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay, and Alan McAlex. Its executive producers include Ama Ampadu, Eva Yates, Diarmid Scrimshaw, Lucia Haslauer, and Martin Gerhard.
Santosh was co-financed by Good Chaos, Razor Film Produktion, Haut et Court, BBC Film, and BFI. The background score has been given by Luisa Gerstein, with Lennert Hillege as the cinematographer and Maxime Pozzi-Garcia as editing.
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