Deepa Mehta Credits TIFF With Helping Her Find a Canadian Identity

For filmmaker Deepa Mehta, the Toronto International Film Festival became far more than a place to screen movies. It became a space where she began to feel that she truly belonged in Canada.

When Mehta arrived in Canada in the 1970s, she carried with her a deep connection to India, the country where she was born. By the late 1980s, as she tried to establish herself as a filmmaker in Toronto, that sense of belonging remained uncertain.

Her personal life was also difficult during that period. Her marriage had broken down, and she experienced racist abuse while walking through Toronto. The loneliness and homesickness became so intense that she once contacted the Indian consulate to ask whether she could work there, even offering to serve as a receptionist without pay.

Her relationship with TIFF changed that feeling.

In 1991, Mehta was invited to bring her first feature film, Sam & Me, to the festival. The invitation represented an important professional milestone, but for Mehta it carried a much deeper meaning.

She had already encountered Piers Handling, who later became one of TIFF’s most influential leaders, at the Cannes Film Festival. Sam & Me had been shown there and received an honourable mention connected to the Caméra d’Or competition.

The film tells the story of Nikhil, a young Indian immigrant who becomes a caregiver for Sam, an elderly Jewish man with an unconventional personality. Indian actor Ranjit Chowdhry played Nikhil and also wrote the screenplay.

When Sam & Me reached Toronto, Mehta experienced a level of warmth and acceptance that stayed with her.

The festival gave her an opportunity to meet other filmmakers, connect with the Canadian film community and see how the country’s cinematic culture was developing. Cameron Bailey, who was then working as a programmer and is now TIFF’s chief executive, introduced the film.

For Mehta, the experience helped redefine what Canada meant to her.

Born in Amritsar, Punjab, in 1950, Mehta became involved in documentary filmmaking while studying for a master’s degree at Delhi University. She met Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman during that period, and the two eventually married.

She moved to Canada in 1973 and began working in television and documentary production before making the transition into feature filmmaking.

Her early experiences as an immigrant became an important influence on her work. Questions surrounding identity, migration, culture, gender and belonging have repeatedly appeared throughout her career.

TIFF continued to play an important role in that journey.

In 1996, the festival invited Mehta to present Fire, the first part of what became her acclaimed elemental trilogy. The film was followed by Earth and Water, completing a body of work that became closely associated with her artistic identity.

Fire starred Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das and attracted significant attention because of its portrayal of romantic feelings between two women within a conservative Indian social setting.

The film also generated debate over how Canadian cinema should be defined. Although the story was set entirely in India and featured Indian actors, the production was connected to Mehta’s life and career in Canada.

That discussion reflected a larger question about Canadian cinema at the time: whether a Canadian film had to tell a story physically located in Canada to be considered part of the country’s cultural landscape.

For Mehta, the answer was found through her own experience.

Her filmmaking demonstrated that Canadian cinema could also reflect the lives, histories and identities of people whose stories crossed national borders.

Fire became an important moment in that evolution. Its themes of sexuality, social restrictions and personal freedom generated international attention while also challenging audiences to consider perspectives that had rarely been represented in mainstream cinema.

Mehta’s professional network in Canada also expanded during this period. She worked with producer David Hamilton, her longtime partner, and together they established Hamilton Mehta Productions. She also developed a relationship with Hussain Amarshi, founder of independent Canadian distributor Mongrel Media.

Through these collaborations, Mehta became increasingly connected to the country’s independent film community.

Her association with TIFF continued well beyond her early years.

She later became an ambassador for Share Her Journey, an initiative launched by the festival to support and promote women working in the film industry.

In 2023, she returned to TIFF with I Am Sirat, a documentary she co directed about the life of a transgender woman in New Delhi.

Her involvement with the festival has now expanded beyond presenting her own films. She is serving as a juror for Canadian programming, giving her an opportunity to watch and evaluate the work of a younger generation of filmmakers.

For Mehta, that experience has offered a different perspective on how dramatically Canadian cinema has changed.

She believes today’s young filmmakers are bringing identities and experiences into Canadian cinema that were previously underrepresented. More importantly, she sees many of them approaching their cultural backgrounds with confidence rather than feeling pressure to explain or apologize for who they are.

That transformation is particularly meaningful to Mehta because much of her own career involved negotiating questions of identity.

Her film Sam & Me remains an important example.

Film scholar Malini Guha has highlighted the film’s unusual portrayal of South Asian immigrant life in Toronto. Rather than focusing primarily on conventional family or romantic conflicts, the film examines South Asian men living together in a Toronto rooming house while attempting to build new lives in Canada.

One memorable sequence takes place during a birthday celebration, when a character named Xavier puts on a sari and performs a Hindi film song.

The scene brings together several characters from different cultural and social backgrounds. Nikhil has brought Sam into the gathering, while others include Keith, a character portrayed as openly queer, and Takahito, who is Japanese.

The group watches the performance together, creating a moment that combines humour, cultural exchange and questions surrounding gender and identity.

For a film made in the early 1990s, the scene offered an unusually broad representation of life in a multicultural Toronto.

It also reflected something that would become central to Mehta’s filmmaking: the idea that identity does not have to fit neatly into a single category.

Her work has frequently explored the tensions that emerge when people cross borders, encounter unfamiliar societies or challenge traditional expectations.

The journey began in part with her own struggle to understand where she belonged.

When Mehta first arrived in Canada, she was an immigrant trying to establish herself in an unfamiliar environment. Decades later, she has become one of the country’s most internationally recognized filmmakers.

Her films have travelled around the world, while her career has helped create greater visibility for South Asian stories and women filmmakers within Canadian cinema.

Looking back, TIFF occupies a special place in that journey.

The invitation to screen Sam & Me did not simply provide an emerging filmmaker with another festival appearance. It gave Mehta recognition at a moment when she was struggling to feel connected to the country where she had chosen to build her life.

The festival became a bridge between her past and her future.

Today, as TIFF prepares for another edition and continues to showcase filmmakers from across Canada and around the world, Mehta sees a younger generation creating a broader definition of Canadian cinema.

For her, that change is deeply encouraging.

The Canada she once struggled to understand has become a country whose cinematic identity increasingly includes people with different languages, cultures, histories and experiences.

And TIFF, which helped Mehta feel Canadian for the first time, remains an important part of that transformation.

Courtesy: theglobeandmail