Deepa Mehta's Water, a tragic story of women trying to survive in pre-independence India, is earning effusive reviews, with The Globe and Mail calling it "a watertight drama" directed with "a quiet, lyrical assurance", and the Toronto Sun calling it "an emotional masterpiece."

The movie tells the story of Chuyia, an eight-year-old girl whose parents arrange for her to be married to an old man she barely knows.

"Yes, an eight-year-old could be married at that time," Mehta explained to Canada AM. "But, you know, the ceremony is a formality -- it's a thing of the past now, and the film is set in 1938 -- they did not go to their husband's house till they reached puberty and stayed with their family so it isn't as if you get married and you're sent off."

When her ailing husband dies, Chuyia's fate is sealed.

"When husbands die, women are sent to these ashrams," Mehta says. "They're spiritual homes by the side of the river, the holy river, the Ganges, where they live the rest of their lives in penitence."

According to the Hindu custom of the time, the widows must shave their heads and live in a cloister, where, for the rest of their days, they must atone for the sins that must surely have prompted their husbands' deaths.

Mehta wanted the film to explore these misogynist hypocrisies while also drawing a parallel between the women's ache for freedom and the freedom that India itself was seeking at the time.

But her story so offended modern Hindu fundamentalists that they attacked her set in Varanasi in 2000 and threatened Mehta with death. After enduring riots and fires, the director and her crew packed it in and closed down production.

Mehta returned to Canada to make instead the romantic comedy, Bollywood Hollywood and her adaptation of Carol Shields' The Republic of Love. But she never abandoned Water and eventually went to Sri Lanka to finish filming Water in secret.

The result is a film that completes Mehta elements trilogy that included Fire (1996) and Earth (1998), and one that many critics are saying is the director's best film to date.

When the film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival - as the festival's opening gala - the 1,200 attendees rose to their feet as the credits rolled to give Mehta a standing ovation. Mehta says it was a wonderful moment.

"I was sitting next to David Hamilton, who was the producer, and Lisa Ray was alongside and John Abraham and we all sort of looked at each other and said 'Oh, my god, what happened?' There was pin-drop silence and then the place erupted."

Mehta says she thinks the film was chosen to open the festival because it represents the TIFF's international scope.

"By choosing Water to open the festival, I think that it really sort of pushed the boundaries of what makes a Canadian film," Mehta says.

"The film is in Hindi with English subtitles and Canada is a multicultural country and this kind of acceptance really proves it, I think."