Best International Film: UK & Ireland

by Cláudio Alves

This past Sunday, there was a lot to entertain awards obsessives. Among the various votes and ceremonies, one can find the British Independent Film Awards, where two of this year's Best International Film Oscar submissions took home some honors. Well, a lot of them in Kneecap's case. The Irish music biopic is the most nominated film in BIFA history, and its final tally of wins is just as impressive – seven victories total. Then, there is Santosh, the UK's Hindi-language submission, which took home two awards, for Breakthrough Producer and Best Screenplay. Will the Academy be similarly in love with these two projects, both works of openly political cinema? Let's consider…

SANTOSH, Sandhya Suri (UK)

A woman runs through the streets. She's crying, clearly in distress. People move away from her path, but no one tries to help. Anxiety surges and a saffron scarf flutters, the night air so saturated with despair you can practically taste it through the screen. So begins Santosh, with an opening that's all the more startling because of the viewer's complete lack of context. Even after the film runs through its two-hour drama, looking back, this figure feels like she could be anyone. Not a symbol, but a representative of Indian women failed by society, by the system, running through the city at night in search of something out of reach, whether a comforting touch or salvation, justice or respect.

And oh, how Santosh wants respect. Not the film, but the woman for whom it is named, a young widow left unmoored in the aftermath of loss. Her dead husband's family wants nothing to do with her, as is made clear in an early squabbling scene. Like many other passages, director Sandhya Suri frames it around her leading lady, Shahana Goswami, trusting her to articulate what the text merely suggests. Consider how she's framed, privileged above all other elements in the mise-en-scène, in focus while the surrounding people remain abstracted and in fragments. Suri wants the audience to look closer, pay attention, lean into an exercise in empathy that might shape itself like a police procedural but would be better described as a character study.

In danger of losing her home along with her husband's presence, his income, Santosh inherits the dead man's job as a police constable. Soon, the hand-held naturalism blessed with the bright colors of Indian costume gets lost as a swath of khaki covers the screen, uniforms and blank walls, authority as defined by force in fifty shades of hopelessness. At first, she doesn't seem to fit within the environment, but the guidance of a fellow woman in uniform, Sunita Rajwar's Inspector Geeta, gradually sees her become a part of the system. Other films, including the mainstream Hindi cinema Santosh so starkly contrasts, would portray this process as empowering. However, this narrative has different priorities. 

Biting into a poisoned apple of supposed self-actualization and empowerment, Santosh is a middle-class upper-caste Hindi woman whose social circumstances reveal a level of entitlement that becomes more evident once she's pulled into the investigation of a Dalit girl's murder. In that situation, her pursuit of respect becomes somewhat sinister, illuminating the stratification of Indian society and its darker side, Islamophobic prejudice, a caste hyerarchy that values some lives over others. What must one do, what must one sacrifice, to earn respect and wield power? Especially when you're a woman in a patriarchal society. In the end, is it worth forfeiting one's soul?

Matters of caste and class and religion are slyly addressed through insinuation and a nice trust in the audience's intelligence to deduce social realities without the need for overt verbalization. Still, Santosh is fairly didactic, using its central character arc as a way to dissect the injustice it finds within Indian society, reaching its peak in a sickening torture scene. Compelled to take part in police brutality, Santosh surrenders to the violence and we're forced to watch it all, no temporal contraction or averted gaze allowed. It's a notable showcase for the actors' work, an electrical moment that's bound to leave the demand "Say you're sorry" echoing in many viewer's ears. 

If only Santosh were able to keep that level of emotional involvement throughout. A lot of it has to do with its rhythms. The film feels sluggishly paced, made without the skill for effective contemplation. Mostly, it works when lingering on the actor's faces – a car ride with a love song on the radio is a good example. But, more often than not, it loses steam to the point of immobility. The strengths of Goswami's performance and probing of the underlying social tensions can only do so much to enliven a piece that feels more fulfilling as an intellectual exercise than as dramaturgy. Still, one should not undervalue Suri's political provocations or her fearlessness when tackling such subjects at a time when Hindi supremacy and support for a caste-based apartheid are on the rise.

KNEECAP, Rich Peppiatt (Ireland)

Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.

Though set in the late 2010s, Kneecap feels closely connected to the British cinema of a few decades past. There's a lot of Danny Boyle here is what I'm saying, a good dash of early Edgar Wright and even some sprinkles of Jonathan Glazer's music video repertoire. And yet, that's not a way of decrying Kneecap as derivative. How could it be when its subjects are so one of a kind? Subjects that play themselves in a dizzying blend of self-mythicization and biopic convention, fictionalized fact and a whole lot of drug-fueled fun. After all, Rich Peppiatt's breakthrough feature concerns the titular trio, an Irish language hip-hop group whose hedonistic personas don't invalidate their political messaging so much as they fortify it.

Deciding that it's better to print the legend than bother with strict reenactment, Kneecap details how the group came together, always framing it within a politicized context. Indeed, the opening foregrounds Arlo, a republican paramilitary who faked his own death to slip through the fingers of the British powers that be. Thanks to him, Naoise and Liam learned to speak Irish, both as part of their cultural identity and as a form of protest. Part of the ceasefire generation, the film later finds the lads living in the Gaeltacht Quarter of Belfast, where they enjoy a life of purposelessness and heavy partying. That is until one dark night, when the vote on the Irish Language Act hangs over the green isle and Liam gets shitfaced.

Taken into police custody, he crosses paths with JJ, a music teacher from an Irish-language school who's brought in to translate for the younger man as he refuses to communicate in English. This chance encounter turns into a friendship that turns into a creative partnership. And so, Kneecap is born and, through their music, the group brings Irish to a whole new generation and cultural relevance, keeping it alive rather than as a deadened historical artifact. Controversy follows, the attacks of anti-drug republicans and the state-sponsored violence of a British police force intent on suppressing everything Kneecap stands for, whether as local celebrities or symbolic bastions for a political cause.

Such descriptions may suggest a dour film, but Peppiatt's creation is anything but. Instead, it feels like a free-wheeling rave where, every few minutes, the revelers are led to take a hit and see what happens, a different drug and film flourish each time. There's anarchic joy to it, a constant state of invention, but also a shapelessness that's not always productive. After all, Kneecap's story isn't over so the film necessarily lacks a conclusion, looking forward rather than settling for a narrative finish line. It makes for a somewhat frustrating watch, especially near its non-ending. At the same time, denying catharsis and closure feels like another lark, another provocation, perfectly aligned with the boys' antics when performing for the crowd, for the cause, themselves, and Ireland.

Oscar Odds? Kneecap should make it to the shortlist with ease, but one can't dismiss the possibility of a surprise snub. Santosh is in a trickier position, though its shortlisting would be a nice symbolic gesture toward Indian women filmmakers who seem to be having a moment right now.