Sumita M. ShethDeepa Mehta's WATER opens across the US
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Been waiting to see Water released commercially? You're in luck - Sumita
Written and directed by Deepa Mehta WATER opens in theaters on April 28 in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and in additional cities across the United States in May.
View the trailer here.
A story of India’s “widow houses,” where women of all ages are taken to live (even today) apart from society following the deaths of their husbands. WATER follows three widows who dared to stand up for themselves in the liberating time of Mahatma Gandhi.
Seven years in the making, WATER was nearly undone by fierce political controversy when the film’s India-based production triggered violent protests by Hindu fundamentalists and was forced to shut down and remount the production – years later, under a shroud of secrecy in the neighboring country of Sri Lanka. But at the film’s debut, opening the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, Mehta’s unflinching and passionate filmmaking resulted in a rousing standing ovation and critical acclaim. “After making WATER, I feel I could retire. That is how satisfied I am,” Mehta said at the time.
The story of WATER begins in 1938 India as an 8 year old girl, who barely even remembers her wedding and has little comprehension of her marriage, has just been widowed. Required by ancient Hindu laws to now leave society, she is brought to a dilapidated widow house or ashram where, according to custom, her hair will be shorn, her clothes exchanged for white robes and the rest of her life, until her death, will be spent in renunciation.
