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Water loses Oscar, still a 'triumph'
Published on Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 13:31, Updated on Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 20:30 in Entertainment section
Tags: Oscars, Water , Los Angeles
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Los Angeles: Indian-born Canadian director Deepa Mehta's Water, a film on the plight of Hindu widows in the India of 1930s, lost out to Germany's The Lives of Others in the Oscar race.
A dazzling first feature from German writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck,
But as The New York Times said, “Win or lose tomorrow (Sunday) night at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, one contender - Deepa Mehta's Water, a nominee for best foreign-language film will already have scored its greatest triumph simply by existing.”
In January 2000, rioting Hindu nationalists in India shut down her sets after she had spent just two days filming her story of an eight-year-old widow shunned by traditional society in the holy city of Varanasi, noted a curtain raiser on the awards.
Asked by local officials to leave, Mehta began again five years and two films later, this time in neighbouring Sri Lanka, the daily recalled, describing it as an "Indian film with roots so deep that it defies borders".
In the course of this film's sometimes harrowing trip to the screen - it took 11 years in all - she weathered death threats, lawsuits and an unexpected reconciliation with a distant daughter.
”So an Oscar, if not exactly anticlimactic, would not be the most extraordinary thing to have come Mehta's way,” the Times said.
Water benefited from a change in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rules this year that allows a foreign-language entry to be in a different language from its country of origin, as long as the "creative talent of that country exercised artistic control".
Mehta and producer David Hamilton are Canadians, and the film qualified as Canada's official entry. India, where Mehta was born and lived until 1973, "would never have put me up", she said.
Water has been sold in 57 countries and released in 25, with close to $14 million in worldwide ticket sales. It is finally scheduled to open theatrically in India on March 9.
Water had survived one preliminary cut and a secondary trim to nine finalists before joining The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), Days of Glory (Algeria), and After the Wedding (Denmark) among the top five nominees.
The Lives of Others, a captivating and wrenching film depicts with a rigorous, straightforward focus on the way the Stasi monitored and tried to control speech and even thought in the German Democratic Republic in 1984.
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