U.S. Trailer for Sandhya Suri’s U.K. Oscar Entry Santosh

Premiering at Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section earlier this year to much acclaim, Sandhya Suri’s narrative directorial debut was recently selected as U.K.’s official Oscar entry. Now set for a release beginning on December 27 from Metrograph Pictures, the new U.S. trailer has arrived for the film starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar.

Here’s the synopsis: “Ripped from her life of domesticity, Santosh, 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, 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.”

“Coming from the documentary world, I suppose I’m always digging for the truth behind what really is going on, which is the basis of the police procedural,” Suri said. “But Indian cinema is also full of police dramas, so I knew I didn’t want Santosh to feel like those films in texture or tone. At first, I thought, what do I know about plotting a thriller? But what I always understood is that this story had to be told from the inside out. The most important thing to me was that the audience’s connection with Santosh be as direct as possible.”

See the trailer below.