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Metrograph Pictures has released a new trailer for “Santosh,” the United Kingdom’s 2025 Oscars submission for Best International Feature. The film written and directed by Sandhya Suri will open in select theaters on December 27. Watch the trailer above.

Ripped from her life of domesticity, Santosh (Shahana Goswami), a young widow now desperate to support herself, accepts an opportunity to inherit her husband’s job as a police officer in the rural badlands of India. Quickly taken under the wing of Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a charismatic and commanding older female inspector, Santosh begins an investigation into a low-caste girl’s brutal murder that plunges her into a gritty world of crime and corruption, forcing her to confront not only the brokenness of the system around her, but her own place within it.

See 2025 Oscars: Complete list of Best International Feature Film submissions

As the film follows the title character’s first eye-opening days on the job,...

The United Kingdom has selected “Santosh” as the country’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. The movie written and directed by Sandhya Suri won Best International Debut at the 2024 Jerusalem Film Festival, premiered in Un Certrain Regard at Cannes, and will make its way to United States theaters in December 2024.

Ripped from her life of domesticity, Santosh (Shahana Goswami), a young widow now desperate to support herself, accepts an opportunity to inherit her husband’s job as a police officer in the rural badlands of India. Quickly taken under the wing of Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a charismatic and commanding older female inspector, Santosh begins an investigation into a low-caste girl’s brutal murder that plunges her into a gritty world of crime and corruption, forcing her to confront not only the brokenness of the system around her, but her own place within it.

The...

The British Academy has selected Sandhya Suri’s acclaimed crime thriller “Santosh” as the U.K.’s submission to the Oscars’ international feature film category.

The Hindi-language film, which bowed in the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes earlier this year, enters the race perhaps carrying some added weight of pressure, with the U.K. having won the international feature Oscar earlier this year for the very first time with Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

The directorial feature debut of of British-Indian filmmaker Suri, best know for her documentaries “I for India” (2005) and “Around India with a Movie Camera” (2018), “Santosh” is set in rural northern India, where newly-widowed Santosh inherits her late husband’s job as a police constable. When an underage girl from one of India’s so-called “lower castes” is murdered, she is pulled into the investigation by a charismatic feminist inspector.

Written and directed by Suri,...

The Zone of Interest, the German-language Holocaust drama directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, has won the United Kingdom its first-ever Academy Award for best international feature at the Oscars 2024.

In his speech for his Cannes Grand Prix-winner, Glazer linked the film’s subject to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, where the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel have led the Benjamin Netanyahu-led government to launch a ground invasion into Gaza that has now left over 30,0000 Palestinians dead.

“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present,” Glazer told the audience, who had honored him with a standing ovation upon his win. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst.”

Glazer went on to explain how the film, which focuses on the quotidian life of the family of the Nazi commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp against the literal...

Matthew Vaughn’s spy thriller Argylle is the widest opener at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office in 626 cinemas, with Universal looking to emulate previous successes from the British director.

Directed by Vaughn from a script by Jason Fuchs, Argylle follows a reclusive author of spy novels, who realises the plot of her new book is starting to mirror real world events.

Henry Cavill, pop star Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, Bryce Dallas Howard, John Cena, Sam Rockwell, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel L. Jason, Bryan Cranston, Sofia Boutella, Louis Partridge and Richard E. Grant are on a star-studded cast list.

Vaughn broke...

A24’s “The Zone of Interest” is spoken in German, but was filmed in Poland and is written and directed by a British auteur. So what does that mean for its prospects for best international feature at the Oscars?

Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest” premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival where it emerged as an early favorite for the coveted Palme d’Or after receiving widespread acclaim.

The film tells the story of a commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp that was one of the sites where six million Jews were murdered.

In the past few years, it seems as if more non-English language features are being submitted that aren’t spoken in the country’s native tongue.

The aim is to shoot in summer next year with a mix of UK and European actors.

UK-based sales agency Bankside Films has boarded worldwide rights on Terrence Davies’ upcoming feature The Post Office Girl, adapted from the Stefan Zweig novel.

Davies has been scouting locations on the project in Vienna this week, with the aim to shoot in summer next year with a mix of UK and European actors.

The Post Office Girl screenplay has already been fully developed by UK producers, Sheryl Crown of Rubicon Pictures and Ruth Caleb.

The project is being put together as an Austrian/UK co-production with Austrian Producers,...

23 Walks is directed by Paul Morrison, Oscar-nominated for his debut feature Solomon & Gaenor.

UK outfit Parkland has struck a double deal on romantic drama 23 Walks, starring Alison Steadman and Dave Johns.

Distributor Parkland Entertainment will release the film in the UK and Ireland, while Parkland Pictures will look after the international sales for the rest of the world.

23 Walks is directed by Paul Morrison, Oscar-nominated for his debut feature Solomon & Gaenor, and whose other credits include Little Ashes and Wondrous Oblivion.

For Parkland, the deal was negotiated by Tom Stewart and Andrew Brown. For the production, the deal...

The United Kingdom has picked My Pure Land, an Urdu-language feature from first-time director Sarmad Masud, to be its contender for the 2018 Oscars in the foreign language category.

This marks the first time Britain has submitted an Urdu-language title to be its Oscar hopeful. The U.K. has only twice been nominated in the foreign language category: in 1993 for Paul Turner's Hedd Wyn and in 1999 with Paul Morrison's Solomon and Gaenor, both films shot in the Welsh language. The United Kingdom has yet to win a foreign language Oscar.

Masud's drama, described as a “feminist Western” is based...

Philippines-set crime thriller, made by British filmmaker Sean Ellis, submitted by the UK for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Metro Manila, by British filmmaker Sean Ellis, has been selected as the UK’s official submission in the Best Foreign Language Film Award category for the Oscars 2014.

A selection committee from BAFTA chose the crime thriller, shot in the Philippine capital in the Tagalog language with a local cast and crew.

The crime drama follows Oscar Ramirez and his family, who escape their impoverished life in the rice fields north of the Philippines for the capital city of Metro Manila. Oscar lands a job for an armored truck company and is taken under the wing of senior officer Ong. But he is soon exposed to the reality of the job’s mortality rate and the shady motives of his new partner.

Metro Manila won the audience award for world cinema at this year’s Sundance...

Actor Ioan Gruffudd talks Fireflies in the Garden, working with Ryan Reynolds, Ringer, and much more.

Ioan Gruffudd has certainly had an intriguing career, from a small role in Titanic, to the Horatio Hornblower series in the U.K., to Mr. Fantastic in Fantastic Four. The actor can currently be seen every Tuesday night on the small screen in CW's Ringer, and he also makes his return to the big screen in Fireflies in the Garden, which hits theaters October 14. I recently had the chance to speak with Ioan Gruffudd over the phone about Fireflies in the Garden, and here's what he had to say.

Can you talk a bit about your initial reaction to the script and what you thought of the character?

Ioan Gruffudd: When I read this script, I was bummed out that I came to it so late, and I wasn't able to go up...

The October 1st deadline for all countries wanting into the Academy Award's foreign-language film category has come and gone. According to IndieWIRE [1], The United Kingdom, which has predominantly submitted Welsh films over the years (if submitting at all), has surprisingly chosen the documentary Afghan Star as its 2009 submission for the Academy Awards. The last time the country received a nomination in this category was in 1999, when Paul Morrison's Welsh and Yiddish Solomon and Gaenor lost out to Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother. Synopsis After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, pop Idol has come to Afghanistan. Millions are watching the TV series 'Afghan Star' and voting for their favorite singers by mobile phone. For many this is their first encounter with democracy. This timely film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk all to become the nation's favorite singer. But will they...

“We made it in the spirit of . . . just need[ing] to make this film, it’s crying out to be done, without expectations of what will happen to it,” says Paul Morrison, director of Little Ashes about his film. “But I’ve been around long enough to know it’s when you least expect it that good things can happen.” Little Ashes (which will be released this Friday, May 8, in the United States) has been met with great anticipation. Starring (The Twilight Saga: New Moon and How To Be star) Robert Pattinson, Javier Beltran, Matthew McNulty, and Marina Gatell, and produced by Carlo Dusi, the film will present an ephemeral biopic of the life of Salvador Dali – a Spanish artist whose art, some say, is impossibly well done. As a director, Paul Morrison is known for his work in Wondrous Oblivion, Solomon And Gaenor, and Degas And Pissarro Fall Out. With Little Ashes nearing release,...