In 1991 she made her feature-film directorial debut with "Sam & Me" (starring Om Puri), a story of the relationship between a young Indian boy and an elderly Jewish gentleman in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale. It broke the record at the time for the highest-budgeted film directed by a woman in Canada at $11 million. It won Honorable Mention in the Camera d'Or category of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Mehta followed this with her film "Camilla" starring Bridget Fonda and Jessica Tandy in 1994. In 2002, she directed "Bollywood/Hollywood", for which she won the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay.