Santosh (2024 film)
| Santosh | |
|---|---|
Indian theatrical release poster with original release date | |
| Directed by | Sandhya Suri |
| Written by | Sandhya Suri |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Lennert Hillege |
| Edited by | Maxime Pozzi-Garcia |
| Music by | Luisa Gerstein |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Civic Studios Vertigo Releasing (United Kingdom and Ireland) PVR Inox Pictures (India) Haut et Court (France) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 120 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | Hindi |
| Budget | $2.5 million |
| Box office | $1.3 million |
Santosh is a 2024 Hindi-language police procedural crime drama film written and directed by Sandhya Suri. It is an international co-production of the United Kingdom, India, Germany, and France. Set in rural north India, it stars Shahana Goswami as a widow who inherits her late husband's job of police constable and is involved in the investigation of the murder and rape of a Dalit teenager.
The film was intended to be a documentary on sexual abuse in India, but the director decided to create a fiction film after seeing an image of female demonstrators and a female constable in a protest on the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder. Filming lasted from August to October 2023 in Lucknow, India. The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 20 May 2024. It was planned for a release in India in January 2025, but was indefinitely delayed as requests for film cuts were not done.
Santosh received positive reception for its cinematography and approach in discussing its themes on corruption and was selected as the UK's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards and made it in the December shortlist.