Oscars: UK Selects Sandhya Suri’s ‘Santosh’ As Best International Feature Submission

Zac Ntim
·2-min read

The UK has submitted Sandhya Suri’s fiction feature debut Santosh as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

The film was selected by BAFTA, the organization appointed by the American Academy to choose the UK’s submission. To be eligible, a British film must be predominantly non-English language and released theatrically outside of the US between 1 November 2023 and 30 September 2024.

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Written and directed by Suri, Santosh debuted in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film’s synopsis reads: In rural Northern India, newly widowed Santosh inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable and becomes embroiled in the investigation of a young girl’s murder.

Written and directed by Sandhya Suri, the film stars Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar, with cinematography by Lennert Hillege, and editing by Maxime Pozzi-Garcia. The film stars Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar, with cinematography by Lennert Hillege, and editing by Maxime Pozzi-Garcia. The film is produced by Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay, and Alan McAlex. Executive producers are Ama Ampadu, Eva Yates, Diarmid Scrimshaw, Lucia Haslauer, and Martin Gerhard. The film is produced by Good Chaos, with co-producers Razor Film and Haut et Court, and is financed by BFI and BBC Film.

Past British films submitted to the International Feature Film category include Winners by Hassan Nazer, Dying to Divorce by Chloe Fairweather, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. The UK won the award last year with Jonathan Glazer’s Zone Of Interest.

Check out the list of this year’s category submissions so far below:

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