subscribe
Advertisment
Life + Culture

Shahana Goswami On 'Santosh:' Power, Prejudice, And The Art Of Subtle Storytelling

In the midst of a celebration of independent cinema, the actor sat down to reflect on her approach to the role in the immersive thriller and why it matters to her.

| Ekta Sinha
Santosh
A still from 'Santosh'

When Shahana Goswami first read the script for Santosh, she was struck not by its dramatic twists, but by its silences—the weight of unspoken tensions, the quiet resilience of a woman navigating a system that was never designed for her. A crime drama in structure, but a deeply introspective social study at its core, Santosh follows a recently widowed woman in rural northern India who unexpectedly inherits her late husband’s position as a police constable. As she struggles to assert herself in a rigidly male-dominated institution, she is drawn into the investigation of a young girl’s murder—an inquiry that forces her to confront the entrenched hierarchies of power, gender and justice.

Directed by Sandhya Suri, Santosh premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered critical acclaim for its nuanced storytelling and understated yet deeply affecting performances. Since then, the film has gained significant momentum on the international stage, earning a BAFTA nomination, a place on the Oscar shortlist, and recognition as one of the National Board of Review’s top five international films of 2024.

In India, Santosh made its debut at the second edition of the Red Lorry Film Festival, where it was met with an equally warm reception. It was here, in the midst of a thriving celebration of independent cinema, that Goswami sat down to reflect on her approach to the role, the immersive world-building of Santosh, and how subtlety and restraint can be just as powerful as spectacle in modern filmmaking.

A Story That Refuses Simplistic Morality

“There is no good or bad, no black or white,” Goswami reflects on the script’s treatment of power and gender. “Santosh doesn’t categorise its characters in moral absolutes. It recognises that systemic issues are complex and that human behaviour, when confronted with power, operates in shades of grey.”

publive-image

It is precisely this rejection of binary storytelling that drew her to the project. The film follows Santosh, a recently widowed woman who inherits her late husband’s police constable position in rural northern India. When the body of a girl is discovered, she is reluctantly pulled into an investigation, mentored by the formidable Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar). The narrative unfolds not with dramatic flourishes but with an observational patience that allows Santosh—and the audience—to experience the world through her evolving consciousness.

“The script doesn’t force the audience to confront society’s injustices head-on,” Goswami explains. “Instead, it reveals them through Santosh’s own lived experience, through her growing awareness and the systemic forces that shape her reality. That’s what makes it so powerful.”

Becoming Santosh: An Internal Metamorphosis

Santosh’s journey is one of quiet evolution rather than grand transformation. She does not wield justice with righteous indignation, nor does she dramatically defy the system overnight. Instead, she absorbs, observes, and navigates her way through a structure designed to suppress her. For Goswami, the preparation was less about conventional research and more about surrendering to the character’s journey.

publive-image

“Physically, I worked on looking smaller, younger—closer to someone constantly in motion,” she says. “But emotionally, my process has always been rooted in conversations rather than structured rehearsal. This time, I thought perhaps I should prepare more thoroughly, but every attempt felt unnatural. The night before the shoot, I was in complete panic, convinced they’d made a mistake in casting me. And yet, as always, once I stepped onto set, the character found me.”

It is an instinctive approach that mirrors Santosh’s own gradual realisation of her place in the world.

Rewriting the Rules of Indian Cinema

As an international co-production, Santosh benefits from a creative environment unburdened by the commercial pressures that often shape Indian mainstream filmmaking. Goswami, who has worked across independent and commercial cinema, sees a distinct difference in how these systems approach storytelling.

“In India, there’s often a perception that audiences need everything spelt out, that subtlety won’t be understood,” she observes. “But with Santosh, Sandhya was given complete creative freedom. No one was trying to make the film ‘more accessible’ in a way that would dilute its essence. That’s the kind of filmmaking I want to be part of.”

The film’s minimalism—its silences, its refusal to over-explain—aligns more closely with European arthouse cinema than traditional Indian drama. “OTT platforms have already demonstrated that audiences are more than capable of engaging with complexity,” she adds. “It’s the industry that needs to catch up.”

Authenticity in Every Frame

To bring Santosh’s world to life, the filmmakers eschewed stylised realism in favour of a deeply immersive, observational approach. Rather than choreographed grit, Santosh captures the textures of daily life—something Goswami felt acutely while filming in the oppressive post-monsoon heat of rural India.

“The uniform is suffocating, the boots are uncomfortable, and women officers wear multiple layers—banyans, shorts—because that’s just their reality,” she recalls. “These aren’t things you think about until you experience them firsthand. But all of it feeds into the character’s body language, her exhaustion, her presence.”

The decision to cast non-professional actors in supporting roles added another layer of realism. “Most of the people we interacted with had never been in front of a camera before. There’s a rawness to that, an unpredictability. It forces you, as an actor, to be completely present.”

Having grown up in Delhi, Goswami was no stranger to the social landscape the film portrays, but immersing herself in the actual locations had a profound effect. “It’s like stepping into an emotional memory you didn’t realise you had,” she says. “A set could never replicate that.”

Sandhya Suri’s Vision: A Director Who Trusts Silence

Suri, a documentarian by training, brings the same observational patience to her fiction filmmaking, trusting her actors and audience to fill in the spaces between words.

“The brilliance of Santosh begins with the writing,” Goswami says. “The script itself was so textured that it didn’t need to be ‘performed’ in the traditional sense. Sandhya was meticulous, but also open to spontaneity. We discussed every scene in detail, but on set, she would often change things—asking us to try a completely different approach, shifting the emotional rhythm. That kept us on our toes, made the performances feel alive.”

The result is a film that, much like its protagonist, resists easy categorisation.

A Film That Lingers

Despite its crime-thriller premise, Santosh is not about solving a mystery—it is about recognising the structures that allow such crimes to exist in the first place.

“What I hope people take away from this film,” Goswami reflects, “is a moment of pause. A moment where they step back and question the prejudices they live with, the way they interact with the world. It’s not about grand realisations. It’s about quiet awareness.”

Related stories