Name: Deepa Mehta
First Film : Earth(1947)


Biography
Deepa Mehta (born 1950 in Amritsar, India) is an Indian born Canadian film director and screenwriter, based in Toronto.

She graduated from the University of Delhi with a degree in philosophy before emigrating to Canada in 1973.

She embarked on her film career as a screenwriter for children's films. In 1991 she made her feature-film directorial debut with Sam & Me (starring Om Puri), a story of the relationship between a young Muslim boy and an elderly Jewish gentleman in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale. It won First Honorable Mention in the Camera d'Or category of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Mehta followed up with Camilla starring Bridget Fonda and Jessica Tandy in 1994.

She is best known for her elements trilogy, all of which were filmed in India. Fire (1996) was set in contemporary India. It was a controversial film due to its explorations of gender, marriage, and sexuality.

Earth (1998) (released in India as 1947: Earth) tells the story of the partition of India in 1947 from the vantage point of a young Parsi girl and is based on the novel Cracking India by author Bapsi Sidhwa.

The final film in the trilogy, Water (2005) was released this fall. Bapsi Sidhwa has been asked to write a book based on Mehta's film script. It is set in the 1930s and focuses upon the lives of a group of widows.

Deepa Mehta is currently working on her next project, Kamagata Maru which stars Amitabh Bachchan and John Abraham. The movie is apparently based on the Komagata Maru incident that occurred in Canada.


Filmography

Films	Year
Bollywood/Hollywood	2002
Water	2007