Sandhya Suri’s police thriller ‘Santosh’ selected as UK’s official submission to Oscars 2025

A constant from ‘satisfaction’ Photo credit: BFI

London-based filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s Uttar Pradesh-set police thriller Satisfiedwhich premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, was named Britain’s Oscar entry in the International Feature category. The film, featuring Hindi dialogues, revolves around a newly widowed housewife who inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable and gets involved in investigating the murder of a young girl.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) said in a statement, “BAFTA is pleased to confirm that Sandhya Suri’s film ‘Santosh’ is the UK’s selection for next year’s Oscars International Feature Film Awards.

Members of BAFTA’s selection committee select UK entries to submit to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the Best International Film category, which won this year’s Oscars. region of interest.

SatisfiedIn contention for the inaugural Film Competition Sutherland Prize at this year’s BFI London Film Festival (LFF) starting next month, Shahana Goswami-starrer A Woman Cop has been hailed as a “masterful thriller” and complex character study whose moral conflicts range from class, caste And there are various issues of intolerance involved.

“I’m not really someone who wants to make a film because they want to teach somebody something. I don’t have a specific campaign or thing that I have to tick off. So, I don’t like educational films. But what I had was the idea of ​​a kind of place. It was interesting,” Suri said PTI In an interview

“The kind of place where these things are just in the DNA of the place. It’s about the kind of place where this misogyny, this racism, religious intolerance, it’s just hanging in the air. It’s… it’s an observation rather than a push through message, that this Things can naturally exist in society and hold up a mirror to that and ask the question: If we put someone like Santosh, who was a housewife, in a place like that, how does she process all that,” she said.

Suri, who also wrote the project, drew on his own Indian heritage and documentary filmmaking skills to shoot his first feature film in and around Lucknow over 44 days with the help of a talented local crew.

“I wanted to shoot in UP because that’s where I’m originally from and I wanted to film a lot of live locations, it was very important for me to have a sense of authenticity. I come from documentaries and it makes me feel like I’m doing something real,” he shares, continuing. Reflecting the background noise the crew had to contend with during local festivals.

“A director’s job is to pick their great crew. I had such a great and experienced Indian crew who just knew how to take it all in their stride. We had enough time for everything and everyone was very good at staying calm during tough times. situation,” she recalls.

Suri, who was born and raised in Darlington in northeast England, found herself constantly drawn to India – a country her father loved dearly. After its London Film Festival outing and UK theatrical release, the filmmaker is excited about the project’s plans. Satisfied Will be released in India.

“It was a struggle to make this quite complex film work in both places right from the start. So, it’s two of the most important things for me to be shown successfully in the UK and also in India because I’m a filmmaker. The UK has a very strong relationship with India,” he said.