Fire

Fire is a 1997 drama set in a New Delhi family that runs a takeaway food business and a video rental shop from the same building. Ashok and Radha have been married for fifteen years without children; Ashok has turned to religion and preaches celibacy, leaving Radha to hold the household and the family business together. His younger brother Jatin, who is involved with another woman, marries Sita under pressure from the family. Sita joins the crowded apartment, helps Radha with the cooking and cares for the elderly mother, Biji. The two young wives, each stuck in an unhappy arranged marriage, grow close in a way that unsettles the family around them. The film was directed by Deepa Mehta, who also wrote the screenplay and produced it with Bobby Bedi, and it was made in India and Canada.

It was the first feature in the chronological list of Mehta's directing credits, followed by Bollywood/Hollywood in 2002 and later films. The cast is led by Shabana Azmi as Radha and Nandita Das as Sita, with Javed Jaffrey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Kushal Rekhi and Ranjit Chowdhry among the twenty-one credited performers. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.1 from around 6,700 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from a much smaller group of voters. A critics' rating of 6.7 from 27 reviews places it close to, though slightly below, the audience score on IMDb.