Fire(Movie, 1996)

Fire is a 1996 Indo-Canadian erotic romantic drama film written and directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das. It is the first installment of Mehta's Elements trilogy; it is succeeded by Earth (1998) and Water (2005). The film is loosely based on Ismat Chughtai's 1942 story, "Lihaaf" ("The Quilt"). Fire is one of the first mainstream Bollywood films to explicitly show homosexual relations, and the first to feature a lesbian relationship. After its 1998 release in India, activists staged several protests, setting off a flurry of public dialogue around issues such as homosexuality and freedom of speech. ()