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Toronto: Actress Shahana Goswami delivers a power-packed performance in Sandhya Suri’s film Santosh that had its North American premiere to a packed house at the on-going Toronto International Film Festival here.
Set in an imagined Chirag Pradesh with fictional cities such as Nehrat, Ghazaliabad and Madrabad, the film is the story of a broken system – casteism, feudalism, gender discrimination, religious bias, injustice against the poor, and the abuse of power.
At the centre of this movie is housewife-turned-cop Santosh Saini played superbly by Shahana Goswami.
Suri highlights our systemic fault-lines through her two female characters – cops Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami) and Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar).
Widowed just two years after her marriage as her cop husband is lynched by a mob, Santosh Saini lands the job of a cop in the same police department on compassionate grounds.
As she is getting used to the mysogynistic and insensitive culture in the police department, a Dalit man comes seeking justice as his daughter is raped and murdered. Brilliant scenes poignantly bring out how there is no justice for the poor man in our system.
Saini is assigned to this case to be investigated by her senior inspector Sunita Rajwar who has over the years has become quite used to the foul language and methods of her department.
As the two female cops pursue the leads in the case, the storyline pivots a bit to highlight upper caste tyranny as a Dalit well is defiled repeatedly – first a decomposed corpse shows up in it, followed by the bodies of a cat and a dog.
When the `suspect’ for the rape and murder of the Dalit girl is finally nabbed and `justice’ meted out to him, Santosh Saini is in a mood for soul-searching.
Geeta Sharma tells her: “There are two types of untouchables (in our society – those whom nobody wants to touch and those who cannot be touched at all.” That’s the essence of this film.
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