British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s fiction feature debut Santosh has been sent by the United Kingdom as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.
The police-procedural stars Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar. It debuted in the Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film’s official synopsis reads: “In rural Northern India, newly widowed Santosh inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable and becomes embroiled in the investigation of a young girl’s murder.”
The film is produced by Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay, and Alan McAlex. Executive producers are Ama Ampadu, Eva Yates, Diarmid Scrimshaw, Lucia Haslauer, and Martin Gerhard.
Past British films submitted to the International Feature Film category include Winners by Hassan Nazer, Dying to Divorce by Chloe Fairweather, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. The UK won the award last year with Jonathan Glazer’s Zone Of Interest.