Deepa Mehta’s latest ‘Videsh’

LINK

Canada-based Indian director Deepa Mehta is a busy woman as is actress Preity Zinta, the protagonist of her latest film “Videsh” about the struggles of a married Indian woman subjected to domestic violence at her in-laws’ in Canada.

Mehta is in India promoting “Videsh,” which also stars debutant Vansh Bhardwaj in the role of Zinta’s husband, finalising the cast and shooting schedules of her next venture “The Exclusion,” a story about Indian asylum-seekers turned away by Canada, and working on yet another movie based on Salman Rushdie’s best-selling novel “Midnight’s Children.”

On the other hand, Zinta, who makes a comeback to cinema after a break of two years, is busy in dividing her time between watching cricket and joining the promos of “Videsh” for which she won the best actress award at the Chicago Film Festival. In the film Zinta plays a battered woman who has moved from Punjab to Canada after marrying a Toronto taxi driver (played by Vansh).

Zinta was recently in New Zealand watching the Indian cricket team playing the one-day matches and back home she is finalising the preparations of her team the Punjab Kings Eleven in the domestic Indian Premier League competition proposed to begin next month. In April, she will be in Toronto where she has been nominated for a Genie Award for best actress for her performance in “Videsh.”

Mehta, 49, says domestic violence is just a part of “Videsh,” whose English version is “Heaven on Earth” — already screened at some international festivals last year. What, according to her, is more important is how Chand (the role played by Zinta) uses her imagination to confront the problems she faces.

Zinta is happy about the way “Videsh” brought her back on the big screen two years after her previous movie “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom,” which was critically and commercially panned.

While welcoming the award in Chicago, the actress said she enjoyed the role in Mehta’s film because it was something closer to reality many women face.

Fans of Zinta will be happy to know that three films featuring her will be commercially released this year.