Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta has tried for many years to finish her "elemental trilogy." After completing the first two films, FIRE and EARTH, she was literally stopped from making the film WATER by Hindu fundamentalists in India. After waiting five years, she began the film again, shooting in secret in Sri Lanka. WATER is set in India in the late 1930s, when the British still ruled and Gandhi was just starting his work. A young woman named Chuyia is sent off by her parents to marry a much older man. This man dies soon after the marriage, and, according to tradition, Chuyia is sent to a "widow's home," where she is supposed to spend the rest of her life. Her young and willful presence has a marked affect on the other women in the home, all of whom have been forced by tradition to give up their lives.