Menu
TRIGGER WARNING: Topics of sexual assault and rape
British-Indian film director Sandhya Suri has made her fiction film debut with ‘Santosh’, which follows the story of a widow turned police officer, as she learns about systemic corruption in rural India.
Suri has thrown her hat in the forensic thriller ring with the film, as the story is drawn from the 2012 Delhi gang-rape Nirbhaya case. During the media coverage of the case and protests falling the demise of the victim and capture of the suspects, Suri saw that it was mainly female police officers who were holding the lines of protestors back, and she started digging deeper into the psyche of Indian policewomen, especially when they had to deal with cases about violence against women.
Suri started her career as a filmmaking documentarian, and her 2008 documentary film ‘I for India’ premiered to great acclaim at The Sundance Festival. However, Suri realized that to showcase the story she wanted to, she would have to add fictionalized elements, and so she decided to switch her field of filmmaking for ‘Santosh’.
Although the forensic thriller genre can be daunting, as it delves into human psychology and behavior, Suri decided to take her time and develop a robust screenplay.
“At first, I thought, what do I know about plotting a thriller? But what I always understood is that this story had to be told from the inside out. The most important thing to me was that the audience’s connection with Santosh be as direct as possible.”
Suri started intensely researching to write the screenplay: she conducted 1-1 interviews with female police officers, including those who had taken a direct leap from being housewives to dangerous police officer positions, like Santosh’s character. She found their experiences unique and story-worthy.
“I was struck by the vastness of this journey from housewife to widow to policewoman. That’s the journey I wanted to see on screen.”
In order to bring the authenticity of Indian police nature to the screen, Suri also worked with a police anthropologist to provide a realistic lens to the Indian police woman.
‘Santosh’ has been submitted to the 2025 Oscars for the Best International Feature Films after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is now playing in theaters in Los Angeles and New York City, and will release in more cities soon.
