‘Santosh’ Writer-Director Sandhya Suri on the ‘Heat’ and ‘Straw Dogs’ Moments in Her Crime Drama Debut: ‘I Was Keen Not to Do Something Too Happy About Female Solidarity’
variety.comTodd Gilchrist To many audiences across the globe, the plot of the Hindi-language drama “Santosh” — in which a widow takes over her husband’s job as a constable — sounds made up.
But for her debut narrative feature, which competed for the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes earlier this year before earning accolades at festivals like Camerimage, British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri drew directly from Indian law.
Specifically, “compassionate grounds” allows the dependent of a government worker to be appointed to a job, including their own, after their death.
As the eponymous fictional character (played by Shahana Goswami) investigates the murder of a young girl under the watch of a female superior officer (Sunita Rajwar) with inscrutable aims, what subsequently unfolds in the film is an extraordinary, unflinching portrait of one woman’s reckoning with personal relationships and a professional community in a larger sociopolitical culture historically controlled and dominated by men.
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