THE EDUCATION OF SANTOSH

NAMRATA JOSHI A spirit of quiet subversion runs through Sandhya Suri's debut feature film Santosh, which competes in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Film Festival 2024.

-  NAMRATA JOSHI

The UK-Germany-France co-production is about the newly widowed Santosh (Shahana Goswami), who is offered her deceased husband's job in the police under the dependent quota scheme.

As she goes about investigating the rape and murder of a minor girl from an oppressed caste, her own journey into understanding the world around her and her own self begins. Mentoring her all the way is the hardened Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) Santosh is an unobtrusive but unflattering and unflinching gaze at patriarchy and the divisions of caste, class, and religion that run deep in society-the casual sexism, normalization of male entitlement, everyday harassment, and humiliation of the marginalized.

The slice of life portrayal brings alive the brutal boondocks of North India and the cop universe therein. A world in which even the women cops find themselves going on a power trip, forgetting protocol, trespassing the boundaries, and heaping injustices on an innocent in trying to get justice for another.

A dialogue in the film sums up the shameful reality most succinctly: "There are two types of untouchables-those we don't want to touch (those from the oppressed caste) and those that we can't touch (the powerful and the privileged)." The day after the film's premiere in Cannes, CE caught up with actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar for a conversation on a wind-swept terrace at Palais des Festivals.