Oscars 2025: United Kingdom selects ‘Santosh’ as Best International Feature Film entry

The United Kingdom has selected “Santosh” as the country’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. The movie written and directed by Sandhya Suri won Best International Debut at the 2024 Jerusalem Film Festival, premiered in Un Certrain Regard at Cannes, and will make its way to United States theaters in December 2024.

Ripped from her life of domesticity, Santosh (Shahana Goswami), a young widow now desperate to support herself, accepts an opportunity to inherit her husband’s job as a police officer in the rural badlands of India. Quickly taken under the wing of Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a charismatic and commanding older female inspector, Santosh begins an investigation into a low-caste girl’s brutal murder that plunges her into a gritty world of crime and corruption, forcing her to confront not only the brokenness of the system around her, but her own place within it.

More from GoldDerby

• 'Babygirl': 5 reasons why Nicole Kidman will receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination

• Box office preview: DreamWorks' 'The Wild Robot' takes on Coppola's 'Megalopolis' and others

• 'A Real Pain' trailer: Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are at odds on their road trip of rediscovery

The UK has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars three times, winning last year for Jonathan Glazer‘s “The Zone of Interest.” The country’s previous nominees were “Hed Wynn” (1993) and “Solomon & Gaenor” (1999).

Suri’s first fiction short, “The Field,” won Best International Short Film at TIFF in 2018, and was BAFTA-nominated for Best Short Film in 2019. In 2016, she was selected for both the Sundance Screenwriters’ and Directors’ Lab with her first fiction feature, “Santosh,” which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

“Santosh” is produced by Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, Balthazar de Ganay and Alan McAlex. Metrograph Pictures will open the film in December 2024.

Best of GoldDerby

• Here's when you can see all the Oscar contenders

• 'The Shawshank Redemption' 30th anniversary: Remembering the beloved 7-time Oscar nominee

• Michael Douglas movies: 14 greatest films ranked worst to best

Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.