This is a phenomenal achievement: the feature film debut from British-Indian former documentary maker Sandhya Suri is a punchy, muscular Hindi-language police procedural set in rural north India. Elegantly scripted by Suri, Santosh combines gripping, gritty storytelling with a deft acknowledgment of some of the murkier aspects of modern India: the police corruption and brutality, the baked-in sexism, the caste prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiment. It strikes a tricky balance between perceptive, issue-led film-making and propulsive entertainment.
The movie was this year’s UK submission to the international Oscar category, but due to problems with the censors is yet to be released in India. It follows the journey of the eponymous central character. Recently widowed Santosh (a magnetic, watchful turn by Shahana Goswami) is, thanks to a government scheme, offered her late husband’s job as a police officer. It’s an opportunity that grants her independence from her hectoring, judgmental in-laws and a growing self-respect. Level-headed, serious and diligent, Santosh is instinctively suited to the job. When a scandal involving the murder of a Dalit (the lowest caste) girl threatens to ignite local unrest, Geeta (Sunita Rajwar, excellent), the veteran female cop brought in to quell the rising tension, immediately spots Santosh’s potential and brings her on to the case as her second-in-command.
It is, Santosh soon realises, a dubious honour. Geeta’s slippery charisma and ruthlessness earn the respect of her male colleagues, but her methods are suspect and her motives, in supporting her younger colleague, opaque. Through the quiet intelligence of Goswami’s impressive performance, we grasp, as she does, that a case closed doesn’t necessarily mean that justice has been done.
In UK and Irish cinemas
