British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri says her debut feature "Santosh", which is the UK's official entry to the Oscars, is a deeply political film but she was careful that the story, woven around two female cops, doesn't become "didactic".
Set in the interiors of north India, the movie revolves around a widow, played by Shahana Goswami, who gets her late husband's job of a police constable. She and her senior inspector (Sunita Rajwar) are soon sucked into a high profile investigation into the rape and murder of a Dalit teenager.
"My film is deeply political about the role of women and where we are," Suri told PTI in an interview, admitting that she often gets lost for words to talk about the movie in a "bigger way" because she funnelled everything she felt about the subject into her movie.
Suri said she knew from the beginning that her script was strong and hoped that as a director she makes the film "as good as the script".
"I'm happy that I did manage to do that... The key to the story is that it doesn't become didactic or it doesn't become a campaigning film or a militant film," she said.
"Santosh" premiered in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival in May and recently screened at the Mumbai MAMI film festival. It will travel to the Dharamshala International Film Festival in November.
Suri, who has made critically acclaimed documentaries such as "I For India" and "Around India with a Movie Camera", said the violence perpetuated against women is not a new topic, but it always disturbed her. It was also the starting seed for her movie.
"There's been more media and outrage about some of these incidents in the last 10 years. But I remember reading daily reports about the casual daily violence and how almost depressingly normal it was for these things to happen even before 2012 (the Delhi gangrape and murder case). I was more outraged by the regularity of such incidents. So it was more like a cumulative effect about the violence as opposed to one particular event."
Asked whether not being based in India gave her the necessary distance to explore the caste, gender and political faultlines in her movie, Suri credited her training in documentary filmmaking for helping her approach the topic a certain way.
"For me, it is not about distance. It is about being a documentary maker and having a certain rigor about the level of observation and research, having a lot of respect for detail and putting them in the film... This film, in script and in shooting, elevated in its craft," she said.
While she didn't set out to make a commercial or genre film, Suri is hopeful that when the film releases in India, "people would want to go and see it".
"It just ended up that I made a film on the Indian police. Actually, it is a very accessible film and the actors are so great. I had an amazing run in the cinemas in France."
Suri said the film's release in India is of "supreme importance" to her.
"I did not make this film for viewers only outside of India... There are things which an Indian audience will definitely pick up that others might not."
It was by design that her central protagonist is a housewife-turned-cop because the filmmaker wanted a lower middle class constable, who "does not move in higher circles".
"I just wanted that really normal average woman who goes on this crazy journey. I wanted that type of woman to be seen all over the world."
Suri does not want to make much of the fact that her film is the first Hindi film to represent the UK in the best international film category at the Oscars.
"Given that it is a largely British-funded film with support from France and Germany and that I'm a British filmmaker of Indian origin, it sort of makes sense. In the beginning of this journey, financing myself out of the United Kingdom was difficult but with time, people have become a bit more used to that and I had great support here," she said.
Both "Santosh" and Payal Kapadia's "All We Imagine As Light" screened at Cannes at different times. The director said while she missed meeting Kapadia at the French movie gala where "All We Imagine As Light" won the Grand Prix award, they crossed paths at the Telluride Film Festival later.
On the inevitable question of female filmmakers triumphing at Cannes this year, she said, "I met Payal in Telluride for the first time, and I think for a joke that was the first question I asked her, 'Like, what do you feel about another female filmmaker?'
"And she asked me the same thing and we had a little laugh because I think it's just a hard question to answer because we are filmmakers and we should be there. I think we're just happy in our own right to be there and in our own journeys because good films are good films."
