Santosh

Filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s searing narrative debut Santosh follows a young housewife (Shahana Goswami) widowed when her police constable husband is killed on the job. Through a government initiative, she is trained to take his place in an overwhelmingly male police station in rural Northern India.

Against Santosh’s urging, her superior cruelly dismisses a low-caste father’s attempt to file a missing report on his teen daughter. The discovery of the girl’s body ignites protests in her community. In response to the negative publicity, the department recruits female inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) to lead the investigation. Santosh is immediately fascinated by Sharma’s ability to ingratiate herself into the masculine culture of the station while remaining a fierce advocate against gendered violence in public. Sharma, meanwhile, spots Santosh’s keen intelligence and ambition and offers to mentor her.

Suri blends a journalistic attention to procedural detail — expertly building tension as evidence and characters are revealed — with an empathetic rendering of Santosh’s internal conflicts. She seeks professional advancement and respect from her peers while clinging to ethics in a system that prioritizes suspect confessions and convictions by any means.

As Santosh, Goswami projects a practical resilience with each action grounded in careful observation. But it is Rajwar’s turn as the charismatic Inspector Sharma — the moral gradations of her character conveyed in the smallest inflections — that communicates the scope of the compromised system both women struggle against.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: homophobic, transphobic, and racist language; violence