Sandhya Suri’s Santosh is a fiction feature shaped by documentary research, encounters with women, and the director’s own relationship with India. In a March 2025 interview with Scroll, Suri discussed how the story took shape, why its central character is fictional, and how a woman’s place inside the police force can complicate ideas of power, solidarity, and justice.
What is Santosh about?
Set in a small town in north India, Santosh follows a recently widowed woman who takes over her late husband’s police constable job on compassionate grounds. Shahana Goswami plays Santosh, who becomes involved in investigating the rape and murder of a Dalit teenager. The inquiry draws her into the police force’s hierarchies and competing understandings of duty, complicity, and justice.
The film was written and directed by Suri and selected for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. The Cannes festival record also describes Santosh joining an investigation under Inspector Sharma.
Is the film based on a true story?
No single real officer’s biography is the basis for Santosh. Suri describes the protagonist as fictional, an amalgam of women she met while travelling. The story grew out of documentary facts and research, but its central premise—a woman hired as a constable on compassionate grounds—led her toward fiction. As Suri put it, “Once it landed on the idea of the female constable being hired on compassionate grounds, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be a documentary.”
#1 Best Overall
Suri has said her initial impulse was to make a film about violence against women and about places where violence can be treated as ordinary. One image that stayed with her came from protests after the 2012 Nirbhaya case: female protesters facing a female police officer. Suri recalled that the officer seemed to her “one of them and she wasn’t one of them. She was the way in.” That image helped her think about a character positioned both within a system of authority and in relation to the women it affects; it is not evidence that the film adapts the officer’s story.
How does Santosh explore power and gender?
Santosh starts in grief and trauma, having just learned of her husband’s death, then enters an institution whose uniform gives her coercive authority as well as the possibility of helping people. Suri describes the character as ambitious and seeking contentment. The film follows her becoming politicised and encountering what Suri calls being “drip-fed casual Islamophobia.”
Rank #2
- Let the games begin! Own the genre-defining Saw horror series in all its grisly glory. Five-disc set includes: Saw (2004), Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), Saw V (2008), Saw VI (2009), Saw: The Final Chapter (2010) and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010).
- Genre: Horror
The relationship between Santosh and Inspector Geeta Sharma is not presented as uncomplicated female solidarity. Suri was interested in a mentor-and-mentee dynamic: Sharma encourages and elevates Santosh, but their connection remains shaped by rank, institutional power, and compromise. That tension allows the film to consider how women can exercise agency inside systems that also constrain them.
Why does Suri call it a film that cares for India?
Suri has described her relationship with India as initially refracted through her father, who yearned for the country and loved his motherland while also caring about its problems. She says she shares that feeling. Speaking about the film’s title and its emotional outlook, she said, “Santosh carries that same feeling of care for India.” She also described research in India and deeper engagement with the country as a stronger part of her relationship than visiting for weddings.
That sense of care is not the same as an uncritical portrait. Suri’s comments connect affection for a place with attention to its problems; the film’s story brings that attention to gendered violence, hierarchy, and institutional conduct.
How does documentary research shape a fiction film?
Suri has worked in both documentary and fiction, and she describes the forms as connected by close attention to emotion, intention, and character. She once worried that fiction required arbitrary choices; she came to value choices grounded in knowing a story and its people closely, with story threads allowed to emerge organically.
That approach helps explain why Santosh can draw on documentary research without presenting itself as a documentary or a reconstruction of one case. Suri has said, “I do not make films to teach.” This is a resistance to a didactic approach, not a claim that the film lacks a political or social perspective.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where can you watch Santosh?
Availability depends on territory and date. Scroll’s March 2025 interview said a UK release was scheduled for March 21, 2025, and that a planned India release had not happened by then. A later Scroll report dated October 21, 2025 said a planned Lionsgate Play release in India had been indefinitely stalled after censorship concerns. That report does not establish the film’s current availability in every country or on every service, so check local cinema, streaming, and rental listings for the latest options.
A French retailer lists a Blaq Out DVD released December 3, 2024, and also lists a Blu-ray edition. The DVD is Zone 2, with Hindi audio and French subtitles. It may suit viewers with a compatible player who are comfortable with French subtitles; the listing does not establish current stock, so check the seller’s details before ordering.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
