Filmmaker Sandhya Suri first made her mark in the cinematic world with her award-winning documentaries and short film. Now, the director has turned her lens to feature films with her brilliant, intense drama, Santosh.
Even before the film was released in theatres, Santosh was a huge success, garnering thundering applause from audiences and rave reviews from critics worldwide. Santosh premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and has been screened at the prestigious BFI London Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival this year. The crime thriller boasts a perfect 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Santosh also recently won two British Independent Film Awards for Best Screenplay and Breakthrough Producers and was named one of the Top 5 International Films of 2024 by the National Board of Review. Not only that, Santosh was included on the shortlist for the Oscars for the Best International Feature Film category for the UK. That is quite an accomplishment for a director for her first feature film.
Let’s set the scene for Santosh. The story follows the journey of Santosh, a young widow desperate to support herself and find her place in the world. She accepts an opportunity to inherit her husband’s job as a police officer in the rural badlands of India. Taken under the wing of Sharma, a charismatic and commanding older female inspector, Santosh begins an investigation into a low-caste girl’s brutal murder that plunges her into a gritty world of crime and corruption, forcing her to confront not only the brokenness of the system around her, the darkness of the world but her place within it.
In this in-depth interview, Sandhya Suri takes us behind the camera and shines the light on the making of her debut feature film. With incredible answers, the director opens up about creating Santosh and her world, gives a fascinating discussion on the craft of filmmaking, and delves into working with outstanding stars Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar—plus so much more!
Tell us what inspired you to want to write and then make this film.
Well, actually, it was quite an organic process arriving at Santosh. It started off with wanting to make a documentary about violence against women. I was in India researching with various NGOs and witnessing some quite gruesome cases coming in day by day. I just felt that to hold a camera up to that wasn’t really working because it was just showing the violence and looking at the result. I felt that I could gain no understanding in that way. I knew that I wanted to get inside the violence somehow and dissect it, understand it, and ask questions of it, which I was finding difficult to do in the documentary form. So, I stopped that project. Then a few years later, after this horrific gang rape in Delhi on the bus, which made the whole media of the world tune in and start to talk, there was an image that came out of the reporting of that story. It was an image of female protesters, very angry, full of hatred and anger, and there was a lone female constable standing in front of them; her visor was half down, and she had a very fascinating expression on her face. That was what got me intrigued. I just thought, oh, that’s the key to this story — I need to tell it through her, she who has the power of the uniform but, in some situations, is also powerless. She, who can represent or have the power to exert force and violence, can also suffer it. I’m interested in where she sits in all of this and what her relationship to this is. And that’s how the journey began, basically.
We have the synopsis, but from your point of view, what is Santosh about?
That’s a very good question, a very tricky one. I suppose it should be easy to answer, but I suppose it is very much Santosh’s story, and there is within that the trajectory of her grief and her search for a new status in society once she loses the status of being a wife. This constant hunger and search for a new place, a new role, and to reassert status in some way, refine that status. But obviously, all of this is set within a very dense tapestry of the particular place in which the film is set. There is this canvas of misogyny and casteism and Islamophobia and casual violence and corruption, which just lingers in the air of this space. What I was interested in was taking Santosh, putting her in that place, and seeing what being in that sort of place does to her.
One of the things I admire most about the film is that from the first moments, you are completely dropped into this world, where you are experiencing everything with Santosh. You are running through the streets; you are there with her, standing behind her almost — not watching her. How did you decide to create your film in this form?
I suppose, for me, it was the most natural way to make the film. I mean, Santosh started with a character, and it was always going to be about entering through her in an organic way. Also, she’s a bit like me — we’re both looking in, very present and very involved, but also taking on a witnessing role. I felt it was very important that there is a witness to all the things that happen in this film. In terms of the energy of being really there, this was also a quite clear decision that I wanted the film to feel as immersive as possible. That’s why there’s no score. I wanted the audience to feel like they are there in this macho ghar, in these places, walking with her through this corridor, in this hotel, and to make it really as immersive as possible in image, in sound, and in editing. There was also a lot of thought about not having the craft of the film draw too much attention to itself. So trying to be really rigorous in the form of the filmmaking and in the craft, but without being overly stylized in a way which might take you out of the film. That was the intention, anyway.
Tell us about casting Shahana Goswami in the lead role.
Shahana actually came on the last day of casting. My casting director had seen her in Zwigato at a screening the night before, and even though she was a little out of our age bracket that we were considering, he said, oh, I think we should call her in. I knew when she walked in that she was exactly the Santosh I imagined. I think there was a way to cast Santosh, which would have been a very naive, very innocent Santosh who is totally wide-eyed and shocked by everything. But, for me, the Santosh that I wrote was always a Santosh who was kind of ambitious, even if she might not know it, kind of hungry. That’s actually why I found it interesting that the first thing you hear about her in the film is her mother-in-law saying, oh, she was like this, she’s like that, she goes out, she’s always spending his money. That’s the first thing you hear about her. I find it interesting to wonder to what extent that might be true, even though her mother-in-law is clearly not a nice character. I like these complexities within her. I think that also giving her the trajectory of her grief in the film, it’s interesting to have somebody like Shahana who can hold so much. You know, she’s not blank with her face a lot; she’s able to play things very subtly, restrained, and held within her. She has to hold quite a lot in the film. She has all these aspects of her, this fantastic physicality, which is sensual, which is strong, this restraint, this sort of hidden large feeling of grief. It’s also these moments of sweetness that shine. We worked together on location, researching a lot in the film’s research phase, then working through the script and talking about what we’d seen in real life and how that feeds into the script. And on set, there’s always an openness about always being able to have a conversation and working all the time together to refine her.
Her eyes speak so much in this film; how do you get your actors in a place to do that?
Obviously, she has amazing eyes, large expressive eyes, so that really helps. I stay very factual in direction in terms of just reminding the actors what they’ve been through. Asking a question about what it is that she needs, because there’s a lot at stake for Santosh pretty much all the time. And I think that Shahana is also just a very instinctive actor, so she’s able to get into her zone very quickly and be within herself. That really helped. Keeping the set quiet, not having too huge of a crew, and working quietly and simply also helps with that.
You also had the brilliant Sunita Rajwar in the film. What was it like to work with her both before, while creating her character, and then on set?
Well, I think Sunita was absolutely fantastic in this role. It’s a difficult role because Sharma is quite an unknowable character. It’s interesting because I feel that Santosh was always very close to my heart, and I knew her very deeply. Sunita, sorry, I mean, actually, Sharma was much more unknowable and also much more easy to fall into a trope of character. So our discussion about her all the time was how to bring her away from that and keep her rooted in reality, a real person and not an archetype. I think Sunita brings a lot of positive energy and is generally a sort of brighter personality than me, maybe. (Laughs) So, I was always trying to drag her a little bit more into Sharma’s darker side, which she embraced quite happily. We just kept the dialogue flowing on set as well as getting through our days, making our shooting days, but always leaving that room to ask questions and collaborate and make it better than on the page.
I have asked this of actors before, but I have always wondered, from a director’s point of view, how it is to go through a tough and intense drama. Do you have trouble letting go of the world and the darkness at the end of the day and once the movie has wrapped?
Coming from a documentary where the characters are real and going through very difficult things, and you may be filming with them, we have that; we experience that a lot. Also, I did run the film department at the Oxfam charity in the UK for almost four years. So that was also about going to a lot of war zones and crisis areas and seeing a lot of suffering. I think we have this understanding of how to manage that. This bears a different responsibility as a fiction film because it is deeply rooted in daily truths that happen. So, it was more about staying faithful to the vision of what I want the scenes to say and making sure that comes across, that that vision comes across.
You brought in so many incredible moments that were unique shots. The long shot at the end, the train rolling past, and the flashes of the couple’s scene on the platform were absolutely brilliant, and there were so many more. How do you design scenes like that and then implement them?
Oh, you asked very nicely about lots of unique shots and lovely moments in the film; thank you. This includes my favorite shot of the film when you mentioned the train passing at the end. I don’t want to talk too much about that shot if people haven’t seen the film because it’s a spoiler, but it does represent many things in the film. For me, it is a moment of hope, of innocence, which stands as a counterpoint to the darkness of the rest of the film. I’m learning a lot about the way I work. This is my first fiction; I love it when ideas arise organically. I always knew that I was going to see this couple in the film, but then I was on recce at the train station, and I saw the station master behind the train passing, and I was like, oh, wow, that’s amazing. Okay, so now we’ve got to go and make this happen. Then it becomes that whole team effort where we’re talking with costume about, okay, what is the outfit that’s going to work best behind that train? And then, of course, with my DP Leonard, I explained to him the shot. He’s like, yes, and let’s add a zoom into that – that’s going to strengthen it even further emotionally. So we do that. Then you have the whole practicalities, of course, of like, oh my goodness, when is this train coming? (Smile) We’ve got the timetable, but is it going to be when it says? (Laughs) Having people further down the line to spot the train arriving at the station so you don’t miss it. So, that was a real adrenaline day shooting at the station. I think that there were a lot of images already in the script that are written in, and then everybody you work with makes them so, so much better. They have that expertise in helping me understand how they’re going to be executed, you know. Then we’re really doing proper the joy of fiction filmmaking, which is the collaboration.
It is said that the final version of the film was actually made in the editing studio. Do you agree? How is it to take all the takes you have shot and decide which one to use and how to bring it all together? Is it hard to let some scenes go?
I mean, they do say the film is written three times, you know, at the script stage, on set, and then again in the edit, so it is the third writing of the film. The script was already really quite tight. In a documentary, that’s even more true, of course, but we didn’t have a huge amount of changes in the edit story-wise. You’re pretty locked in on that one tiny bit of the story that went just a few minutes. It is my favorite part of the filmmaking process; it’s where I feel most at home, where I feel most happy and creative, and, you know, it’s a collaboration I absolutely adore with the editor. I think instinct is very important, and what is very important is the freshness of your editor, to see their reaction and their first reaction to a take, and to make sure that’s all noted somewhere because that freshness gets lost after a certain moment. But what feels good, I think, is if you’re clear about your story, it doesn’t feel confusing in the edit with this sculpting, this constant sculpting and refining, and shaping. If you’re in a good place with your script and you don’t have major problems with pace or story, then it’s a really lovely place to keep working on refining and making sharp cuts. I love having that oversight. I love working in the weeds and working scene by scene and then stepping back to have that overall view of how your story is working. Then, have a great discussion with your editor afterward. I never have a problem letting anything go. I’m really merciless as long as it’s serving the story. If it’s serving the story, it can stay; if it’s not doesn’t, no matter how gorgeous it is, it doesn’t matter how hard it was to shoot it; it goes in the bin (laughs). That’s what I feel about always serving the story.
What makes you the proudest about this film?
That it’s my first feature and that I made it without compromises. It is the film that I wanted it to be, you know, and that’s what stands in front of us. It was a hard film; it took a good 10 years to make. It was a very difficult shoot, and I feel really proud and really happy that everybody worked so hard to make it. And that the story was served —- the story was served, so I’m very proud of that.
What do you hope audiences will take away with them?
That’s a really difficult question to answer. I don’t know; I think maybe later in my filmmaking career, I will find a better way to answer that because I don’t know what an audience will take away. What I hope for is that I’ve left enough space within the film to leave the audience space to think. You know, they haven’t been told what to think in the film. They’ve just been left space within it to feel, ask questions, and reflect. I think there is a lot to unpack in the film, and I hope that when they come out of that film, they can go and talk about it. What I hope they’re left with, because I’m not talking about messages, I’m talking more about emotion, is a sort of uneasy sense of mixed emotions. At the end of the film, there’s only one piece of music which is composed in the film, and that is the end score, the end credit sequence. I worked with a great composer to come up with that which only uses two female voices. It has a certain mixture of anger and melancholy and a haunting questioning nature. I think that there is this feeling for me that the music encapsulates where I think the audience might be left at the end of the film — with a sort of uncomfortable mix of emotions and a lot to think about, I hope—but having also been really emotionally impacted and drawn in by Santosh’s journey through the film.
It has garnered rave reviews and numerous awards; how does that feel?
I’m very, very grateful and really happy about the sort of response the film has been getting. What’s been really meaningful to me is that I’ve always wanted this to be a real crossover film on two fronts, one cross-culturally, meaning even from the very outset, this was always meant to be a film for Indian audiences and Western audiences equally. It was to try to be as accurate as possible and have that specificity of India, but for that universality of the themes and the emotions of Santosh to work elsewhere as well. And that’s what’s been so satisfying is to feel that that’s happening, not just in the reviews and awards, but with audiences I’m sharing the film with worldwide, from Tokyo to Poland to India and the UK. (smile) That’s been really gratifying. I’m really looking forward to and hoping for a great release in the US, UK, India, and elsewhere so we can connect with more audiences.
Santosh is the UK’s entry for the Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category and has now been selected for the shortlist. How did it feel when you first learned about that?
Obviously, having made it to the shortlist of the Academy Awards is absolutely incredible. I’m very pragmatic, and I think, well, I did what I could do to make the film the best it could be with where I am in my career and my experience right now, and the rest is up to the universe. But of course, you’re always hoping, right? (Laughs) So yesterday I was waiting, what was it, the day before, or yesterday, I can’t remember, the day the shortlist came out, I was, you know, a little antsy waiting. Then the day was going on, and I was thinking, oh well, I’ll make myself a comfort dinner now. Then my phone started pinging, and I just thought oh, maybe I’ll take a look after dinner’s finished. Then I looked and was thrilled to find out that we’re through to the shortlist. I am very, very proud of everybody. It’s been a mixture of a lot of slow plodding and hard work and little steps forward to an absolutely crazy ride of the shoot and now this. And it does really feel like the pain’s been worth it. So, yeah, thank you, everybody. Fingers crossed going forward.
Thank you, Sandhya Suri, for your incredible insight into Santosh and excellent answers.
Santosh releases on December 27th at the IFC Center in NYC and then releases in additional US cities in January. I highly recommend this outstanding film. You can read our full review here.
