Deepa Mehta is going to the Academy Awards, after earlier this morning being handed a best foreign-language nomination for her feel-bad smash Water, putting her in the running alongside Denmark’s After the Wedding and Germany’s The Lives of Others.

‘[I’m] thrilled! It means a lot to me. It’s a film that’s very personal, and we’ve had such a difficult time with it, so it feels good,’ Mehta told Playback Daily upon receiving news of her first Oscar nomination.

Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico) and Days of Glory (Algeria) also scored foreign-language noms. ‘It’s a pretty competitive year, there’s no question about that… it’s going to be interesting,’ says Water producer David Hamilton. The film waged a vigorous nomination campaign in Hollywood, which, he says, will now switch into phase two. ‘You can’t convince people to vote for a film but you can remind them that they liked it.’

‘For me a nomination is what counts… now it doesn’t matter who wins,’ says Mehta, adding that she’s looking forward to walking the red carpet.

The Oscar nom caps off a year of accolades and awards for Water, released in Canada through Mongrel Media and Fox Searchlight in the U.S., and which has been sold to 57 countries including the U.K., India and Denmark. The film, about impoverished widows in 1930s India, brought in U$5.6 million at the North American box office after it played in 150 theaters.

The first and only Canadian film to win the foreign-language Oscar was Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions in 2004.

Hamilton and Mehta are currently working on another drama, Exclusion, and an unnamed comedy which may go to camera later this year.

The Canada/Norway copro The Danish Poet, made on this side via the National Film Board, is also nominated for best animated short.

The Academy Awards will be handed out Feb. 25 in Los Angeles.