Water

A FILM BY Deepa Mehta

A magnificent film!

- Salman Rushdie

A Triumph.

- Time Magazine

Deepa Mehta has saved the best for last. Melodrama has always been her true element, and Water, aptly enough, is by far the most fluid of her Indian trilogy.

- Rick Groen, The Globe & Mail

Luminous.

- Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert

Masterpice!

- Toronto Sun

Profoundly Moving Drama... Deeply Satisfying

- Eddie Cockrell, Variety

Water is an exquisite film about the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief.

- Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

Synopsis

A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste. A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven. A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal. - The Laws of Manu, Chapter 5 verse 156-161, Dharamshastras (Sacred Hind texts) Set in 1938 Colonial India, against Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, the story begins when eight-year-old Chuyia is widowed and sent to a home where Hindu widows must live in penitence. Chuyia’s feisty presence affects the lives of the other residents, including a beautiful young widow, who falls for a Gandhian idealist.