Reviews

I saw this movie at a Festival in Bologna, Italy, (in which George Gittoes has been invited as a juror) and it literally left me in awe.

It's a gonzo-style documentary shot between Pakistan and Afghanistan, during the previous and following months of Benazir Bhutto killing. It talks about Pakistani film industry, a sort of low-budget, cheesy and naive Bollywood-style industry that struggle to stay alive in a society ruled by violence and oppression: DVD stores get bombed and replaced with Dvds of Al qaeda propaganda. The crews need to wander from location to location to find a place where they could shoot some scenes without being killed. Actresses talk about themselves in shame, as they were prostitutes. Gittoes got so involved in this landscape that he actually starts to act in some features and even produce two of them with 7000 $.

The movie begins with Gittoes actually grabbing a half-burned DVD from a bonfire and showing it to the camera. Immediately, he's surrounded by armed Talibans, threatening him with Kalashnikov.During the movie, you encounter this kind of shocking and dangerous scenes every 5 or 10 minutes, but it also provides good laughs and insights about war, censorship, art, religion.

I highly recommend it. It's simply worth watching for everyone who's interested in film-making and nowadays world.

I don't want to curb no one's enthusiasm, but I found this movie too much glamorous, at least not as strong as I expected. I Mean, it is actually a good work, but I expected a little more "Magdalene" and a little less "Romeo&Juliet".

Probably it was my fault. I knew Deepa Mehta and her cast had several problems in India, they were menaced, blackmailed or something like that, and finally the set was set on fire and they had to move in Sri Lanka. So I thought the treatment of this terrible facts was, i don't know, sugarless...some scenes looked to me a little phony, like the "colour-feast" and the love scene near the river, with Narajan playing the flute..I know it's a Bollywood clichè, but the importance and sourness of the subject made me think it was a bit inopportune. Even the Historic and political insert was someway strained, a simple background for an unlucky love story...

Maybe the matter was only on my wrong expectations. Although I'm sure Deepa Mehta will win the Foreign Movie Oscar this. Water has the right mix of Fashion and Exotism to grab it, and it's surely a good movie.

I gave 7/10. Now,let's insult me!;)