EXCLUSIVE: “It’s a real shame,” filmmaker Sandhya Suri concluded this afternoon as she sat down for a brief discussion with Deadline after being named as one of the 2025 recipients of the BFI and Chanel’s Filmmaker Award.
Suri, a veteran documentary filmmaker turned fiction director, obviously wasn’t referring to the award, which comes with a £20,000 cash prize, but rather the news that the official Indian release of her 2024 feature Santosh has once again been paused.
Santosh debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was released in the U.S. in December 2024. Vertigo released the film in the UK in March. The film, which is set in Northern India, didn’t receive a theatrical release in India due to censorship blocks, but had been set for an Indian streaming debut today, October 17, via Lionsgate Play. The streaming release has been paused at the last minute.
“The process in India is that the censor board may ask you to make cuts for a theatrical release. The cuts they asked for were not acceptable to me or my team. We could not make those cuts as they compromised the integrity of the film too profoundly,” Suri said.
“The objections I had to cuts for the theatrical release remain my objections for a streaming release. The streamers don’t need, by law, to have censorship status to show films. But perhaps this is about an environment in which streamers take on certain objections of their own accord for a harmonious universe.”
Despite no official release in India, Suri said that she knows people in the country are “100% watching” the film due to the “amount of feedback everyone is getting.” The filmmaker added that news of the film’s streaming debut being paused will sadly increase piracy of the film in India.
“It was announced and now we’re un-announcing, so a lot more people are going to watch it in some other form,” she said. “My wish is for the film to be distributed legitimately and uncut in India.”
Santosh debuted in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes in 2024 and was submitted as the UK’s entry for the Best International Feature category at the 97th Academy Awards. The film follows a newly widowed Santosh, who inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable and becomes embroiled in the investigation of a young girl’s murder.
The film was produced by Good Chaos, with co-producers Razor Film and Haut et Court, and was financed by BFI and BBC Film.
Next, Suri will direct an adaptation of an unnamed J. G. Ballard novel for a screenplay she is currently writing. Suri declined to name which Ballard novel she is tackling but described it as “Ballard with a lot of emotion.”
The post ‘Santosh’ Censorship Hurdles In India Continue As Planned Streaming Release Paused, Director Sandhya Suri Reacts: “My Wish Is For The Film To Be Distributed Legitimately & Uncut” appeared first on Deadline.
