Water (2005)

Deepa Mehta | Sri Lanka, Canada | 2005 | 117 min | NC16 (Coarse Language) A sobering look at child marriage and the fate of Hindu widows in India against the backdrop of Gandhian anti-colonialism. In 1938 in the holy city of Varanasi, child bride Chuyia is sent to an ashram for widows after her husband’s death. The spirited girl rails against its dreariness and the expectation of lifelong mourning and renunciation. At the same time, she slowly endears herself to some of the other widows, including beautiful Kalyani, forced into prostitution to finance the ashram. After Kalyani meets idealistic Narayan, an upper-class follower of Gandhi, he asks her to marry him despite the taboo against widows remarrying. As progressive anti-colonial activists advocate for women’s rights, the pair’s romance is exposed, and the widows must contend with challenges to long-held traditions they have accepted as their lot in life.