For Deepa Mehta, the whole point of filmmaking is 'to start a dialogue'

CBC

17-04-2025

When Deepa Mehta was young, her father — a successful film distributor and movie theatre owner — told her there are two unknowns in life.
"One is you'll never know when you're going to die," Mehta tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "And the other is you will never know how your film will be received critically or financially."
That paternal wisdom has followed the acclaimed Indian-Canadian filmmaker throughout her decades-long career. Speaking directly to themes of social consciousness and liberation, Mehta's films have received massive critical praise, but they've also been protested, her sets have been invaded, and she's had to hire bodyguards after receiving death threats.
With her groundbreaking Elements trilogy, made up of the films Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005), Mehta critiqued traditional society in India by interrogating the politics of sexuality, the politics of sectarian war, and the politics of religion. She says each film was driven by a particular question she had, like why is self-determination in women called selfish? As a result, Mehta was labelled a "controversial" filmmaker — a term that she strongly disagrees with.
"Oh, I hate the word 'controversy.' I hear it a lot," she says. "I hate the word 'controversial' because it's so simplistic…. Controversial how? Were [my films] controversial in India? Yes, they were. Was it controversial or was it made? I don't know, Tom. I don't sit on my kitchen table, which is where I write my scripts by the way, and say, 'OK, let me think of a controversial topic.'"
Fire, the first film in the Elements trilogy, portrayed an emotional and physical relationship between two Hindu women trapped in loveless marriages. The film was criticized for being "anti-India," as Mehta recalls, because "there are no lesbians in India," according to the fundamentalist religious groups that protested it.
If my films can start a dialogue, I'm really cool with it. - Deepa Mehta
Just like her father warned her, Mehta says she had no clue that Fire would be met with such backlash. But the film also inspired a counter-protest, which saw women gather in Connaught Place in central Delhi, holding placards that said "we're Indians and we're lesbians."
"I realized that this is the point of making a film, is to start a dialogue," Mehta says.
"It's really important to have different points of view. And that's OK. Because if my films can evoke a dialogue between people who like them and people who don't, for whatever reason they do and whatever reason they don't, then that's OK. That's the way it should be. If my films can start a dialogue, I'm really cool with it."
Mehta is currently being honoured with a career retrospective, Through the Fire: The Films of Deepa Mehta, at TIFF in Toronto. It features screenings of 10 of her most prominent films of the past 35 years and it's on now until April 23.