Deepa Mehta: Thought Provocateur & Filmmaker

My guest today on BOLDLY FEMININE is DEEPA MEHTA, an Indo-Canadian filmmaker whose film WATER was selected for Best Foreign  Film by the Academy Awards in 2007. Her films are each unique in their exploration of social references from forced marriages, to homosexuality, misogyny and layers upon layers within those topics. She was also selected by Salman Rushdie, who was kind enough to introduce us in 2018, to direct the film version of his novel, Midnight’s Children. 

Here we delve into her origins in film, her cultural and societal influences and why the medium of film was her calling to communicate upon issues she wanted to elevate to a global audience.

DEEPA MEHTA BIOGRAPHY

Deepa Mehta is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose work is internationally renowned. Her emotionally resonating, award-winning films have played every major film festival, and been sold and distributed around the globe. Her films include the Elemental Trilogy: Earth, Fire, and the Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Water; Bollywood/Hollywood, Heaven on Earth and the epic adaptation of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s three-time Booker Prize winning novel; Anatomy of Violence, and most recently the award-winning Funny Boy, which was nominated for several Canadian Screen Awards and won for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. The film also picked up Best Picture and Best Supporting Performance Female at the 2021 Leo Awards. For the small screen, Mehta shot the pilot and second episode for the Netflix Original series, Leila, and is the Creative Executive Producer for the show. She also directed The Manager, the pilot episode of Little America for Apple TV as well as the episode Bear Down for Showtime’s critically acclaimed series Yellowjackets. Mehta is currently working as the Writer and Director of Propagate Content’s feature film Burnt Sugar, based on Avni Doshi’s award-winning novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize.