Deepa Mehta will receive the 15th Human Rights Film Festival Award

06.04.17

The Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta will receive this year the Award of the 15th San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival (March 31st – April 7th). The prize ceremony will be at the Victoria Eugenia Theater on Friday 7 at 20:00, at the Closing Night of the Festival.

The trophy, made by the Basque artist Aitor Mendizabal, is a copy of the monolith Oroimena – Memoria in memory of all the victims.

On the same Friday 7 will be screened at the Victoria Eugenia Theater (16:30), with free attendance, Deepa Mehta's last work, the documentary Anatomy of Violence (2016). After the screening the director will attend a Q&A with the audicence.

The films made by director Deepa Mehta in the last three decades mean that she is now an essential moviemaker. Born in India, after studying philosophy in New Delhi she moved to Canada, where she has lived since the sixties, although the country of her birth and its people play the lead part in most of her work.

From her first film –Sam & Me (1991)– to the most recent –Anatomy of Violence (2016), where she addresses the subject of group rapes in India– her films have been screened and have received awards at festivals all over the world. Mehta is famous worldwide for her Elements Trilogy –Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005)–, where she tells stories occurring at different times in the history of the Asian country.

The tale of friendship between two women of different ages, Camilla (1994), the drama on domestic violence, Heaven on Earth (2008), the adaptation of Salman Rushdie's classic novel Midnight's Children (2012) and the tale of street gangs Beeba Boys (2015), among others, shape the career of a woman whose work always takes a daring, courageous and provocative stance towards traditions and stereotypes.

Her work as an artist and her constant attention to all kinds of social problems have earned her myriad acknowledgements, including the Excellence in the Arts Award from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Order of Ontario. In 2013 she was named Officer of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian distinction, for her work as a "groundbreaking screenwriter, director and producer".