U.K. Oscar Submission 'Santosh' Sets Holiday Release

One of the significant problems that the Academy Awards continues to struggle with is that most years, they're awarding films no one has seen. This is due to a variety of factors, from Art House movies being traditionally challenging to market to those in the movie industry who vote for the categories snobbishly eschewing films that make bank at the box office as somehow "not good enough." However, the worst reason is that most of the time, these films come and go from theaters in the blink of an eye, or worse, never open anywhere near the average viewer.

That's almost certainly what will happen with Santosh, which already had one "blink and you already missed it" run in the States in July 2024. The Hindi language film is the first fictional story from documentary director Sandhya Suri, and now the official submission from the U.K. for the Best International Film at the 2025 Academy Awards. The BFI, bestowing the honor of the film, guaranteed it would play in the U.S. a second time so voters could see it in theaters. However, it's only coming out in limited release, and worse, it arrives in the middle of the week between Christmas and New Year, which this year also means smack in the middle of Hanukkah to boot.

For those who have not read about the film when it originally debuted at Cannes 2024, it is the story of a widow who takes over her late husband's position as the local police constable, only to discover that policing allows her to help young women in trouble. Soon enough, she's trying to solve the brutal murder of a young girl despite not having the proper training or the respect of her male peers. Check out the trailer: