What is Indian about Santosh? – Hindu

Never before has the UK chosen a Hindi-language film as the official entry for the Best International Feature Oscar. British-Indian documentary Sandhya Suri’s narrative feature debut Santosh not, however, the first subcontinental film to achieve distinction.

Sarmad Masud’s Urdu film My land is pure“a modern feminist set in Pakistan”, is the UK’s 2017 Oscar entry. But that clearly doesn’t diminish the distance from the police thriller set in Uttar Pradesh Santosh have traveled “I really hope that we will make it to the UK, but as a filmmaker, I prefer not to speculate on outcomes that are out of my control,” Suri said. “But I did a huge fist pump and screamed with joy!”

Shahana Goswami, the film’s lead, learned just a day before the announcement that England would be betting. Santosh. It was a British production but India had a right to be proud of the film, he felt. “Santosh it’s an Indian co-production made with an Indian cast and a partly Indian crew by an Indian-origin filmmaker telling an Indian story,” he notes, but is quick to add, “Appropriation is a difficult thing. I did not say we can claim that Santosh is us film, but we can celebrate that there is a story in India and involving talent in this country has come a long way.

For Goswami personally, Santosh is special. “The film,” he said, “is very much borne by my character. I always want to do more in this… (Bangladeshi film Rubaiyat Hossain) Under Construction it was the last movie that had me in every frame. It’s been 10 years.”

Head start in Cannes

Santosh has successfully opened a theater in France after its Cannes premiere. As an Oscar entry, we can now expect distribution in other markets. “We are lucky,” said Suri, “to have had an incredible run in France, almost 150,000 entries and maintaining a solid position for two months at the box office.” He added that it was important to him that the film be distributed in India and the UK. We have proven it Santosh plays well with audiences as a crossover film that operates within genres.

(L-R) Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar and Sandhya Suri attend a Santosh photocall at the Cannes Film Festival | Photo credit: Getty Images

Goswami is positive Santosh will be distributed in India, if only on streamers. “These days, taking an OTT platform is appropriate for certain films that have a specific audience,” he said.

Santosh always destined for great things, adds Sunita Rajwar, who plays the seasoned policewoman Goswami, seen after she takes over the job of her recently deceased husband and is immediately thrown into the investigation of a young girl’s death.

Not your average cop drama

“We know all this Santosh won’t be your average cop drama,” Rajwar continued. Suri, he revealed, auditioned Goswami and him twice, “once individually and then together to ensure our chemistry”. “We spent 10-12 days with Sandhya to find out the character’s requirements . The three of us were together. It helps us understand each other. Sandhya is very clear about what she wants.

Suri, who is a regular visitor to India – “quite a few visits because I have a daughter now,” she says – is acutely aware of the need “to portray violence against women in a meaningful way”.

Her work process involved asking a lot of questions. “Because I live outside, I know how I will portray things. I ask myself, a lot of questions, that’s why my films take so long.

Sunita Rajwar (left) and Shahana Goswami

Clear the boundaries

Santosh for example the nature of global arthouse cinema today. In recent decades, these films have transcended national boundaries. Santosh is a BBC Film production with Petit Chaos and Haut et Court of France, ZDF Arte and Razor Film Production of Germany, and India’s Match Image as partners.

As a multi-national production, it will compete with several other films of its own for Oscar nominations. Poland’s entry Under the volcanoabout a vacationing Ukrainian family stranded in Tenerife due to the Russian invasion of their country, has, in addition to Ukrainian, Spanish, English, Russian, German and Wolof on the soundtrack.

Matthew Rankin Universal LanguageCanadian entry, it is a film mainly Persian, French Emilio Perezwinner of the Cannes Jury Prize directed by Jacques Audiard, is a Spanish-language film set in Mexico, Germany. Holy Seed Image is a Persian film directed by Mohammad Rasoulof Iran, and Switzerland Reina filmed in Peru in Spain. Contender from Iceland, action director Baltasar Kormákur Touch itavailable in Icelandic, English and Japanese. Senegal has chosen Dahomey, Diop’s Dead Golden Bear-winning documentary. It is a Senegalese-French-Benin co-production.

A is still from Santosh

Therefore, there is no big problem Santoshlensed by Dutch cinematographer Lennert Hillege and edited by Paris-based Maxime Pozzi-Garcia, going to the Oscars as the UK entry. That may be, is the English post 2023, Jonathan Glazer Zone of InterestGerman-Polish-Yiddish film based on the novel by Martin Amis, went all out and won the Best International Feature Oscar, the first for a non-British English film.

This will be an action that must be taken, even if it is difficult!

The writer is a film critic based in New Delhi.