KVIFF 2024: ‘Santosh’ is a Gripping Procedural Thriller from India
by Alex Billington
July 2, 2024
We live in turbulent times, where problems within modern society seem to be getting worse & worse every day. Every country is struggling with great challenges, and India is no exception. On one hand, the country is trying to push forward and solve societal problems related to women’s rights and corruption. On the other hand, corruption still rules and the caste system still dominates every aspect of life, no matter who tries to change it. Santosh is a refreshingly clever example of filmmaking & storytelling that might provide some hope. It’s an exceptional year for Indian cinema with a handful of highlights – between Girls Will Be Girls from Sundance, the action movie Kill opening in theaters, Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, and the award-winning All We Imagine as Light from Cannes. Santosh is yet another Cannes 2024 gem, and it’s my favorite Indian cinema discovery from the Cannes line-up this summer; in all honesty, I prefer it slightly more than All We Imagine as Light. After first premiering in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, Santosh also showed up at the 2024 Karlovy Vary Film Festival and it’s one of the best features screening in their entire selection.
Written and directed by filmmaker Sandhya Suri, Santosh is her feature directorial debut after one other doc previously. The film is primarily a police procedural with a few dashes of noir, though it subverts the usual procedural by following a disquieting story and showing how corrupt most Indian cops are. Newly widowed Santosh, starring Shahana Goswami with an extraordinarily moving performance, inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in Northern India. When a young girl’s body is found, she’s pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma, played by Sunita Rajwar. As she follows the investigation and attempts to help the “untouchable” family who lost their daughter, Santosh starts to realize it’s all more complex than it seems. This dips into the usual trope of how any good-hearted, honest, driven cop usually gets shredded by their colleagues, digging even further into localized deception and the many problems that permeate every aspect of life in India. Even though she may be the “good cop”, and even though Sharma seems like an inspiration at first, that won’t be enough to make any real progress. It makes you wonder if the old adage that you can only change something from the inside is a load of bunk.
This is a strong film through and through, impressed me quite a bit. Complex, layered, has plenty to say but also works in harsh truths to think about, while making it compelling to follow the story. Even if we know these truths already, even if we know it’s hard to change a broken system, at least within this film there is an underlying hope that keeps the narrative interesting. I understand it’s hard to convince anyone (outside of film festivals) to watch a film like this, but I have to try because it’s not a film I can shake off. I hope it also leaves others with a feeling they can’t shake either. Goswami’s performance as Santosh is so mesmerizing, she’s fierce and compassionate, but also doesn’t feel distant or unapproachable, she’s also rather quiet but you can sense all of her emotions & her thoughts just from her eyes. The film is also crafted with dynamic filmmaking – a few cuts made me giddy with joy, and the pacing is handled with such a great understanding of cinema. It’s not so slow as to be a dull slow burn thriller, but it’s also not fast-paced or jittery, letting the tension ebb & flow in the right way. At two hours, it’s a tad long but it kept my attention completely anyway.
Best of all, there is a breathtaking finale that caps things off quite brilliantly. These two final shots are all-timers. I have to bump up my final rating because of these two final shots and how they left me in complete awe. While the rest of the film doesn’t completely break free from conventional storytelling, these last few moments land so hard it makes everything that comes before that much more meaningful. And I’m always a sucker for train shots, yes please, and both of these blew me away… One of them is an instant “this will go down in history” shot inspired by the old zoetrope technique. This is the kind of engaging, smart, vibrant cinema I am always looking forward to discovering at any festival. I will be happily raving about this film the rest of the year now. I do hope it has an impact, I do hope it inspires some change. If anything, I do hope it provides viewers with a chance to see that they can make a difference, even if it means not participating in the broken system themselves, contrary to the advice claiming that this is the only way to fix what’s wrong. There’s so much we can learn from Santosh and I’m glad we now have a vivid role model like her in cinema.
Alex’s KVIFF 2024 Rating: 9 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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