Deftly balancing epic sociopolitical scope with intimate human emotions, all polished to a high technical gloss, Deepa Mehta’s Water is a profoundly moving drama.
VARIETY

Quite possibly the best picture of the year thus far, with no fewer than three of the most luminous female performances I have ever seen onscreen.
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

Well-intended, sensitively acted and beautifully filmed.
ORLANDO WEEKLY

Mehta’s film is courageous and reticent, a shout masquerading as a whisper.
SEATTLE TIMES

It is superb and strange at once, a discreet and self-disciplined attack dog of a movie.
WASHINGTON POST

An unforgettable film of devastating beauty
KILLER MOVIE REVIREWS

The film is lovely in the way Satyajit Ray’s films are lovely. It sees poverty and deprivation as a condition of life, not an exception to it, and finds beauty in the souls of its characters.
CHICAGO SUN TIMES

An exhilarating, intensely moving film of bold, unwavering vision, Water brings Meehta’s Elemental Trilogy to a triumphant close.
REEL.COM

Water is an exquisite film about the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief.
NEW YORK TIMES

Although Water is easily Ms. Mehta’s richest and most complex film, it is still the work of a humanitarian, made with incredible tenderness and real concern for the plight of her female characters.
NEW YORK OBSERVER

Watch and be stunned.
E!

Mehta has inspired her cast to rise from one dramatic challenge to another, and her film is charged throughout with the tension between the wisdom of accepting one’s lot in life and the urge to resist it.
LA TIMES

This work of gorgeous fury, about the virtual imprisonment of millions of Hindu widows in the years before independence, transforms Mehta’s feminist rage into an eloquent testament to the hunger for freedom.
VILLAGE VOICE

An exquisite drama brimming with life and laughter and great tenderness and wrenching tragedy.
JAM MOVIES

Like Bandit Queen and Maya, Water bravely delves into outmoded social traditions of India, thus roiling the waters of religious fundamentalism, which might mean that Deepa Mehta’s film will never get past the censors in that country.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER