Cannes 2024 Short Take: Santosh is a Tough Film About a Tough Terrain

Santosh is the story of a 28-year-old widow in small town India who inherits her dead husband’s police job. The film marks the feature debut of British Indian director Sandhya Suri who has also written the story and screenplay. This is a film in which little details take on big meaning. Watch the way in which Santosh, played by a terrific Shahana Goswami, covers her head before she enters her in-laws' house. It tells you about how they expect her to behave. Or the way toothbrushes at a sink speak of the home she had built with her husband. Or the way a young girl’s hair hangs out of her shroud screaming of brutality and injustice.

Santosh is Sandhya’s first feature film but she exerts an absolute grip on the narrative, which confronts, without shouting or flinching, the horrifying fault lines in our country – gender, caste, religion, the mocking indifference of the few who wield power. And somehow in this cauldron of apathy and violence, a smidgen of decency and compassion survives. Sandhya doesn’t create in black and white. This is a landscape that doesn’t even provide the comfort of obvious villains. It’s a tough film about a tough terrain.

Santosh played in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77^th Cannes Film Festival.