U.K. Names Santosh for International Feature Race

The U.Ok. has chosen Santosh, an Indian police procedural from director Sandhya Suri, to signify the nation within the 2025 Oscars in the perfect worldwide characteristic class.

Shahana Goswami stars because the titular Santosh, a pushed younger Hindu widow who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable due to a authorities scheme. She finds herself caught up in institutional corruption whilst she warms to working with rough-edged veteran detective Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) on a brutal homicide case involving a teenage woman from the decrease caste Dalit neighborhood.

Santosh premiered in Cannes’ Un Sure Regard part this 12 months, the place it was rapidly snatched up for North America by Metrograph Photos. The Hollywood Reporter‘s overview known as the characteristic “gripping and engrossing” singling out Suri’s screenplay for reward. “As a substitute of unwieldy expository dialogue, Suri depends on conversations between Santosh and Sharma to make clear the forces — a discriminatory society, a corrupt office — that may drive these two ladies right into a sort of reluctant Faustian alliance.”

Santosh marks Suri’s narrative characteristic debut after her breakout documentary I For India (2005), and her quick drama The Area, which gained finest worldwide quick in Toronto in 2018 and picked up a 2019 BAFTA nomination.

The UK has had three movies nominated for the Academy Awards in the perfect worldwide characteristic class and gained its first Oscar this 12 months when Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Curiosity took the highest honor.

The Academy of Movement Photos Arts and Sciences will unveil its 2025 Oscar shortlist, together with finest worldwide characteristic contenders on December 17. Oscar nominations shall be introduced on Jan. 17, 2025. The 97th Academy Awards shall be held on Sunday, March 2.