Water

Water (2005) is Deepa Mehta's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It's late-1930s India. Eight-year-old Chuyia is told she is a widow: married off as a small child to a grown man she barely knew, she now learns he has died. Custom leaves her three roads, and each one strips her of a life.

She is sent to an ashram by the river — a house where widows cast out by society live out their days. They shave their heads, wear plain white, and beg for alms; their very touch is treated as defilement. Chuyia grows close to two of the women, the dreamy beauty Kalyani and the steadfast Shakuntala, and the child's stubbornness slowly shakes a way of life that had stood unquestioned for centuries. Far off, Gandhi's ideas about equality are spreading, and even this forgotten place feels the tremor.

The film completes Mehta's elemental trilogy after Fire and Earth; fundamentalists shut down the Indian shoot, and she could only finish it in Sri Lanka. Canada put it forward for the foreign-language Oscar. Quiet, bitter and strikingly beautiful, it's one for viewers who love thoughtful dramas built around women. Stream Water (2005) online on iFILM.