Deepa Mehta’s dramatic feature Water is turning into one of the Canadian success stories of the year, following a wave of releases in the U.S. and overseas.

Producer David Hamilton says he is ‘thrilled’ by the response. ‘I’m not surprised, because I think the film is so strong,’ Hamilton says. ‘This is a very audience-friendly film.’

The film has opened in several territories over the past few months; in Spain on March 3, where it has taken in $750,000, and in Australia, where it pulled in $133,000 over its Easter weekend debut, according to a recent press release. It debuted on April 28 in Switzerland, at number seven at the box office.

The film opened in L.A., New York and San Francisco on April 28, on a total of five screens, taking in a very strong average of $12,000 per screen for its opening weekend. In the next two weeks, it will expand to more than 100 screens across the U.S.

Water is the first Canadian film to be released by Fox Searchlight and, Hamilton notes, the launch has been bolstered by glowing reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Village Voice.

‘I think the thing that is very appealing about Water is that it has a subtext many different audiences can relate to,’ he says. The picture is the last of Mehta’s elemental trilogy and recounts the poor treatment of widows in 1930s India. ‘It’s a subtext that reaches beyond the specific characters of the film. So it’s a film very specific to India but also very general in its message.’

The film has been sold to 40 territories internationally through its foreign sales agent, Toronto-based Celluloid Dreams.

Water took in $2.2 million at the Canadian box office, via Mongrel Media, and is now available on DVD in both single-disc and two-disc, special edition versions.

Its story has also been written in a novel form, published by Key Porter Books in Canada. Mehta asked celebrated author Bapsi Sidhwa to translate the screenplay into a novel, which made for an interesting switch. It was Sidhwa’s autobiography, Cracking India, that formed the basis for Mehta’s screenplay for her 1998 film Earth.

‘I am extremely happy with what Mongrel Media did here in Canada,’ says Hamilton. ‘The conventional wisdom is that you should try to release in Canada and the U.S. at the same time. But in this case, I think we really benefited from having a release here first.’