Deepa Mehta

Festival Participant

Deepa Mehta was born in India and received a degree in philosophy from the University of New Delhi. In 1991, Mehta produced and directed her first feature film Sam & Me, which won the very first Honorable Mention by the Critics in the prestigious Camera D'Or category at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. In 1993, Mehta directed her second feature film, Camilla. Fire, Mehta's third feature film, based on an original screenplay, was written, directed and produced by Mehta. Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's critically acclaimed novel, Cracking India, is the second film in Mehta's trilogy of the elements, Fire, Earth and Water. Earth was shot in New Delhi, India, in January of 1998. Her film Bollywood/ Hollywood has remained in the top 10 grossing English movies since its Canadian opening in 2002. In 2003 Mehta won the prestigious CineAsia “Best Director” Award – an acclaim awarded to Steven Spielberg in 2002. Water, the third film in the “elements” trilogy, opened the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. Initially, Water was to be shot in India, but Hindu fundamentalists created riots, burnt the sets and issued death threats to the director and actors forcing the film to stop production in early 2000. The film was remounted and completed shooting in Sri Lanka in June 2004. The film was nominated for nine Genie awards, winning three. The Vancouver Film Critics Circle named Deepa Mehta the Best Director of a Canadian Film in 2006. More recently, the film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. Mehta’s latest film, Heaven On Earth, is about immigration, isolation and the power of imagination. Mehta’s next film is an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s acclaimed novel Midnight’s Children.