Ajit Rai

It was strange to see that Sandhya Suri's Hindi film 'Santosh' was sent by Britain as an official entry for the Oscar Award, bypassing hundreds of English films. This film competed with films from 85 countries and qualified as one of the 15 films for the second round, whereas India's official entry Kiran Rao's film 'Laapaata Ladies' was out of the Oscar Award competition in the first round.

This is probably the first incident in the history of world cinema that a Hindi film has been sent for the Oscars in the category of Best International Film by a non-Hindi country. 'Santosh' is in a way Sandhya Suri's first feature film. She is otherwise known for her short films and documentaries.

Sandhya Suri has also written its story and script.

Sandhya Suri is a British citizen; so are the producers of this film. In that sense, Santosh is a British film; in terms of language, story, actors, atmosphere, locale, shooting, etc. it's an Indian film.

The film had a grand premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year. Since then, the film has been shown in festivals including the Mumbai Film Festival, the Goa Film Festival, and the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).

Sandhya Suri started working on this film when she was included in the prestigious Sundance Screen Lab project in 2016.

Poster of the Movie Santosh

Santosh is a feminist film in which Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar have played the lead roles. Before I discuss the film, I must praise the cinematographer (Director of photography) of this film, Lennart Hillage, for doing a great job.

He has depicted each scene in a fantastically realistic manner. Be it the scene of fishing out the body of a Dalit girl from the well; the police raiding the dusty area of ​​Meeru; picking the body from the mortuary for postmortem; the police investigation at the house of the female village head or the village head Santosh having to urinate in the open in the corn field while hiding is shot very realistically.

Santosh Baliyan is from a village in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh. Her husband is a police constable. After her marriage, she becomes Santosh Sainirriage. One day she gets the news that her husband has been killed on duty.

Her in-laws are not ready to keep her with them. Her parents have come to take her home. The film begins from here. Santosh wants to prepare for competitive exams.

She applies to the police to allow her to live in her husband's government accommodation. The police officer tells her that this is not possible. However, if she accepts the job of a constable in place of her husband., she could retain the accommodation.

She joins the police. From here the film takes an endless turn which includes corruption, Jat-Dalit and Hindu-Muslim tension, the helplessness of a female police officer in a male chauvinistic police system, etc. Then it is revealed that someone has raped and murdered a teenage Dalit girl.

Sunita Rajwar as Mrs Sharma in a scene from Santosh

And threw her body into the well of the Dalit colony from where they take water. The police administration assigns the investigation to a mysterious lady police inspector Mrs. Sharma and Santosh.

Mrs. Sharma's suspicion falls on the Muslim boy with whom the girl was in contact and exchanged messages on the phone. That boy has fled in fear since she died. Mrs. Sharma raids a hotel in a dusty area of ​​Meerut with Santosh and catches the innocent Muslim boy who was washing the utensils at that time.

The Muzaffarnagar and Meerut police take him to a deserted ruin and torture him, and ask him to confess his crime. Meanwhile, the police administration holds a press conference where it claims to have caught the murderer.

Meanwhile, the Muslim boy dies in custody. Santosh remains a silent spectator in this entire process. 

After the postmortem, Santosh goes to the Dalit girl's house to give her family her earrings. It's the most poignant scene. The audience sees the pain of her disabled parents. The camera also captures the agony of the Muslim boy's parents to melt the hearts of audiences.

There is no overt violence in the film except in the torture scene in which a policeman stands and urinates on a fallen youth, nor is there any direct political comment. The film cooks on a slow flame of human emotions in which questions of caste, religion, and community are left far behind.

Santosh knows that the real culprit of the rape and murder of that Dalit girl is the husband of the Jat woman village head. When Santosh goes to the village head's house for the last time, her little daughter tells her in a playful way that the Dalit girl had come there on the day of the murder.

The husband of the village head arrives and threatens Santosh In one scene, Mrs. Sharma and Santosh meet in the verandah of the women's police quarters at midnight. Their conversation is enough to expose the police system as well as the caste system. 

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Santosh does not want to stay in the police colony anymore. She gets her crisp police uniform washed and puts it on the bed. She is returning home by train wearing the usual colourful salwar-kameez, probably a euphemism for starting afresh.