Canada's first foreign film Oscar nomination comes with an Ottawa twist.

As Ottawa's David Hamilton can attest, the Oscar nomination Deepa Mehta's Water has earned for best foreign film is almost as amazing as the fact it made it to a movie screen.

"It's a miracle when a film gets made," laughs Hamilton, producer of Water. "And you wonder how did all these things come into place, because at certain times in the filming of any film there's something that goes so badly wrong, you think, 'How are we going to get out of this?' "

Most films do "get out of this." But in the case of the first Water shoot, Hindu extremists opposed to Mehta's story of ancient traditions, which force widows into poverty, servitude and prostitution, ended up shutting down production.

"I used to get calls in the middle of the night saying they were going to rape and kill the actors, the actresses, the director ... it wasn't fun," recalls Hamilton of the 2000 shoot in the Indian province of Utter Pradesh. "We had our phones tapped, they had a mole in our production office, they were pretty well-organized."

Riots, burning effigies and the threat of more violence had police indicating they couldn't protect the cast and crew. The government withdrew the film permit, and everyone fled the country.

Hamilton and Mehta had faced controversy and roadblocks before, after the first film in her trilogy, Fire, was released in 1996 and during shooting of 1998's Earth.

But that was nothing by comparison, he says.

"By the time we came back from India, Deepa and I, we were pretty devastated," recalls Hamilton. "We didn't know what to do. It took us about six weeks to recover."

It was then, sitting at Mehta's breakfast table, they decided their next project would be pure fun. And so because Water seemed a lost cause and no one was in the mood for heavy material, the pair chose to make Bollywood/Hollywood, introducing the famous Indian dance-and-music genre to North America.

It was only four years later, under a fake name and in Sri Lanka, that shooting on Water would go ahead.

Hamilton was raised an army brat, moving around the country in his youth and failing to put down roots. He has lived in Ottawa since his school days, spent studying engineering at McGill University and business at Harvard. He then embarked on a year-long travel fellowship, convincing a motorhome company to loan him a vehicle in exchange for advertising and shipping it to Holland. From there he traversed India via Afghanistan and Iran's Great Salt Desert. Hamilton developed a love of Mehta's vast homeland back then, though he admits "it got a little tarnished" after the Water ordeal.

Despite the troubled filming process, there is no doubt Water has been blessed in post-production. It is the first Canadian film ever acquired by U.S. distributor Fox Searchlight (Boys Don't Cry). It has grossed $6.2 million.

It opened the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005 to rave reviews and before this year, Water, shot in Hindi with English subtitles, would not even have been eligible for a best foreign film Oscar nomination. A recent rule change means films are no longer required to be made in their host country's official language.

There is still work to be done before the Feb. 25 Oscar telecast. In addition to attending a variety of events, the Water team will be lobbying Academy members to make sure the movie gets as much attention as possible.

"I don't think we're the frontrunner," says Hamilton, who is heading to Los Angeles this week. "It think Pan's Labyrinth is the front runner. But I think we have a shot."