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Billboard Women in Music 2025
From facing angry mobs in Varanasi to fielding calls from George Lucas, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta has built a fearless career challenging cultural taboos — and at 74, she’s not slowing down.
In a wide-ranging conversation ahead of her career retrospective “Through the Fire: The Films of Deepa Mehta” at Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque, the filmmaker sat down with Variety to discuss her journey from reluctant cinephile to celebrated auteur whose works have consistently challenged social and political norms over the last 30 years.
“Should I be retiring instead of doing work?” Mehta jokes when asked about the retrospective. “No, too much,” she quickly adds, dismissing the notion of slowing down with characteristic determination.
The Indo-Canadian director, whose films frequently examine divisions – between countries, communities and within individuals themselves – traces her cinematic roots to childhood days spent in her father’s movie theater in the Punjab.
“I grew up with films. My father was a film distributor and a theater owner in Amritsar,” Mehta recalls. “After school, we’d hang around and pick up dad and see movies while he’s doing his calls or working, til he was free.”
It was during these formative years that Mehta first experienced cinema’s emotional power, recalling her confusion at crying over the film “Nagin” (1954). “I remember being about 6 or 7… and sitting there and asking my dad, ‘This is not real… but why am I crying?’” she remembers. “I’d seen what a projection room was, I’d actually felt the screen with my hands and realized that was cloth, but I didn’t get it that these aren’t real people on the screen.”
Despite this immersion, young Mehta initially resisted filmmaking as a career path after witnessing her father’s anxiety over box office returns. “Fridays were the worst days for us at home because they were the days a film was released… my father’s mood depended on how the box office had been on the day.”
Instead, she pursued philosophy, only to be drawn back to cinema when a friend asked her to answer phones at a documentary film company in Delhi. After being told she had “the worst phone manners in the world,” she was directed toward editing, eventually learning sound, cinematography and directing as she made the move to Canada.
Mehta’s feature debut “Sam & Me” (1991), which received a special mention at Cannes, kicked off a career marked by constant innovation. The film, about an Indian immigrant who forms an unlikely bond with an elderly Jewish man in Toronto, stemmed from Mehta’s own experience of cultural displacement.
“I was dying to do something that reflected where I was in my life in some way or the other, what it’s like to be the other,” she explains. Working with writer-actor Ranjit Chaudhary, she crafted a narrative exploring belonging and identity that would become recurring themes in her work.
Before embarking on her celebrated “Elements Trilogy,” Mehta had a career chapter directing episodes of “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” for George Lucas, an experience she calls “the high point of my growth.”
“I got a call in my hotel room, and the person said, ‘May I speak to Deepa?’ I said, ‘Speaking,’ and he said, ‘This is George Lucas here.’ So I said, ‘Right.’ And I put down the phone,” Mehta recalls with a laugh. “He rang up again. He said, ‘Don’t put down the phone. It really is me.’”
Lucas later edited one of her episodes himself, and Mehta proudly notes she was “the only woman director on the ‘Young Indiana Jones’ series.”
Mehta’s “Elements Trilogy” – “Fire” (1996), “Earth” (1998) and “Water” (2005) – established her international reputation but also brought unprecedented challenges. “Fire,” depicting a lesbian relationship between two Hindu women, played by Shabana Azmi and debutant Nandita Das, sparked violent protests in India when released.
Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi – “Fire”
TIFF
“When the protests started happening, it was a bit of a shock because [the government] were the ones who had approved it,” Mehta says. Despite the backlash, she also witnessed powerful solidarity at a protest outside Delhi’s Regal Cinema, where women held signs declaring, “I’m a lesbian and I’m Indian” – directly challenging government claims that “there are no lesbians in India.”
For “Earth,” Mehta adapted Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel “Ice Candy Man” (published as “Cracking India” in North America). Unfolding against the backdrop of the traumatic 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, the film follows a young Hindu woman caught between two Muslim suitors as religious tensions erupt into devastating sectarian violence. What drew her to the book was a quote from Sidhwa on the back cover: “All wars are fought on women’s bodies.”
The film featured Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan in a pivotal role as the ice candy man. “I thought he was superb,” Mehta says of casting Khan. “Being a big star, he didn’t [hesitate]. He said, ‘Absolutely you must do [an audition], because how will you know… when you go to set, you have to be really confident that you chose the right person.’”
Despite Khan’s star power, “Earth” faced its own distribution challenges in India. “The film was never really released in India because at that point… they said that it’s a film that’s anti-Hindu,” Mehta reveals. “It so reverberates [with] what’s happening today in Gaza. It really hurt me that it just never got what it was meant to, though it was, surprisingly, India’s entry into the Oscars.”
Nandita Das, Aamir Khan – “Earth”
TIFF
The production of “Water” encountered even more severe opposition in Varanasi, forcing Mehta to abandon the initial shoot after protesters claimed the film denigrated Hinduism – despite the script having received government approval. Set in colonial India against Gandhi’s rise to power, the film tells the story of an 8-year-old widow, who is sent to a widow’s ashram where her presence affects the lives of the other residents.
“We were shooting in Varanasi… Nandita was there, Shabana was there. And they’d all shaved their heads,” Mehta recalls. “It was the fourth day when it happened… suddenly again, [people claimed] there are no child widows in India. So why didn’t you say that when you read the script?”
The film was ultimately shot in Sri Lanka years later, but only after Mehta had processed her emotions about the experience. “It took me five years… because I was so angry. I really didn’t want anger to drive me to do the film. I just didn’t want that because the film didn’t deserve my bitterness.” “Water” was Canada’s entry in the Oscars’ international category and went on to be nominated.
Lisa Ray, John Abraham – “Water”
TIFF
For “Midnight’s Children” (2012), Mehta tackled Salman Rushdie’s sprawling Booker Prize-winning novel after a simple dinner conversation. “Salman, we have to do something together,” she told him. When asked which book, “it just came out of my mouth… ‘Midnight’s Children.’” Rushdie offered her the rights for $1 and wrote the screenplay himself. The film follows two children born at the exact moment of India’s independence, their fates mysteriously intertwined as they navigate the country’s tumultuous post-colonial history.
Now actively supporting emerging filmmakers as executive producer on projects like “To Kill a Tiger” and “Wakhri,” Mehta continues developing her own work, including upcoming features “Sher,” “Forgiveness” and “Troilokya.”
“It’s not really just the horrific division of, let’s say, India and Pakistan, or whatever the colonizers have done to us. It’s also the division within ourselves, what we want to be,” she explains.
Her father’s wisdom continues to guide her artistic choices. “There are two things in life we don’t know about: one is when we are going to die, and the other is how a film will be received and what will the box office be,” she recounts about his philosophy. “So I’ve done all the films because I really wanted to do them, not because I thought, will they get good reviews or will I be politically correct.”
As for the underlying themes in her work, Mehta quotes Javed Akhtar’s lyrics for the “Ishwar Allah” song in “Earth” – “O God, why is there hatred in your world? Why is there war? You have such a big heart, so why is the heart of mankind so tight?”
The retrospective “Through the Fire: The Films of Deepa Mehta” runs April 4-23 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, featuring 10 of her feature films with multiple Q&A sessions with the director.
