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TORONTO -- According to Piers Handling, director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival Group, the decision to open this year's event with Deepa Mehta's visually-striking epic "Water" wasn't really much of a decision at all. And it had nothing to do with the fact that the Indian-born Mehta is a Canadian citizen. "It felt very right, very well-directed, beautifully shot and with an epic feel to it," Handling says. If only the production itself had been this trouble-free. Set in 1930s India, "Water" tells the story of an 8-year-old child bride who is exiled to a widow's ashram after her husband dies. The film began shooting in Varanasi, India, in 2000 but quickly had to shut down when negative word-of-mouth spread among the locals. Hindu extremists, angered over Mehta allegedly disparaging their culture and religion, brought production on the film to a halt with hints of violence and even death threats. "Water" producer David Hamilton recalls going to great lengths to quell the concerns of senior religious figures in Varanasi by assuring them that Mehta's film was in no way meant to be disrespectful to their culture. "When we read out the script, the religious figures said it sounded like a beautiful movie," Hamilton recalls. "We asked them to say that publicly, and they agreed to do so." But the religious figures never spoke aloud; instead, they conspired with the police and local politicians against the filmmakers. "The very people protecting us were the ones against us," Hamilton says. When a rioting mob surrounded the film's cast and crew on the first day of shooting, police halted production "in the interests of public safety." Hamilton made the decision to abruptly end the shoot and quickly shepherded Mehta and company on to an airplane and out of the city. When camera work on "Water" resumed in Sri Lanka four years later under the cover of secrecy, the filmmakers' fortunes began to change. "In Sri Lanka, we had our problems, but they were everyday problems — the steadicam operator falling so we had to fly in a new camera. We were successful," Hamilton says. Says Mehta of her experiences in Varanasi, "It took me four years not to be angry, for it not to color my approach to the film." Mehta adds that her persistence in completing "Water" sprang, in part, from a need to finish a trilogy of films that includes 1997's "Fire," which centers on two Indian women who develop a lesbian relationship after they become frustrated with married life, and 1999's "Earth," a look at life along the troubled Indian/Pakistani border. "This is the culmination of 10 years of work and not in a sense a single film," Hamilton says of "Water." Mehta says she hopes the first-night audience in Toronto doesn't get too caught up in the history behind the making of "Water" and appreciates the film as a work of art. "I don't want to be perceived as a victim or a heroine that
met all odds and made the film," she says
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