'Curiosity drives my work'

Deepa Mehta talks about being one of India's earliest diaspora filmmakers, telling stories of immigrants, Zohran Mamdani, Al and the future of cinema

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A still from Fire A still from Earth

RENOWNED Indo-Canadian filmmaker, Deepa Mehta, was recently presented the Cinema Honorary Award, Singapore International Film Festival's highest accolade that recognises filmmakers who have made an exceptional and enduring contribution to Asian cinema.

The previous recipients include South Korea's Im Kwon-taek, Indonesia's Garin Nugroho, Japan's Takashi Miike, and Iran's Jafar Panahi.

One of India's earliest diaspora filmmakers, Mehta started off by making documentaries. Her first feature film, Sam and Me (1991), was about the friendship between a young Indian immigrant in Canada and an elderly Jewish man. Best known for her “Elements Trilogy”—Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and the Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Water (2005)—Mehta won the best director award at the Canadian Screen Awards for Funny Boy (2020), a coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of Tamil-Sinhalese tensions in Sri Lanka. Her latest is a documentary, I Am Sirat (2023), that she co-directed with Sirat Taneja, the transgender woman whose life it focuses on. It premiered in the Toronto International Film Festival 2023 and was in competition at the BFI London Film Festival in the same year.

You have been one of India’s earliest diaspora filmmakers. How was it being one at that time?

A still from Water