‘Santosh’: When Justice is a Performance

There is something performative about the police in any country. The uniform is a literal costume that empowers some officers to strike, yet also makes them docile lapdogs of the political establishment. In one telling moment in Sandhya Suri’s Santosh (2024), Inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) seems to let her young mentee in on the contours of her role. As she drives, she lights a cigarette and loses herself to a song playing on the radio. “Wapas kardo meri neend, wapas kardo mera karaar,” croons Asha Bhosle. Return my sleep, return my balance. “There are so many feelings in this song, but at the end of the day, it’s just filmi. Not the truth,” Sharma says to Constable Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami). “They sing with all their heart,” Santosh agrees. “But yes, it’s just a performance.” 

Santosh, shortlisted for an Oscar for Best International Feature, is stitched together in these paradoxes: ordinary dialogue juxtaposed with wanton violence. It’s all very cinéma vérité, or “film truth” — natural for Suri, a documentary filmmaker making her debut in narrative fiction. Through Santosh, Suri explores a local branch of Indian police united in its performance of justice. She relays the story through the yet unformed gaze of Santosh, a widow who inherits her dead husband’s job with an “appointment on compassionate grounds,” only to learn that there is very little compassion in the profession.