After two decades of filmmaking, Mira Nair has found a new yardstick to measure her success: Johnny Depp invited her to direct him in a movie.

Shantaram, based on the novel by Gregory David Roberts, will begin filming in November.

In the meantime, Nair, 49, is promoting her latest feature -- The Namesake, a multigenerational family drama about Indian immigrants in the United States and the struggles to preserve cultural traditions among their children.

She was born in India and educated at Delhi University, and at Harvard University.

After early documentaries, her first narrative feature was Salaam Bombay! -- about the plight of homeless children in the Indian metropolis.

It was nominated for an Oscar and took major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.

Q: Do you call India your home?

A: I've lived in Kampala, Uganda, since 1989. And we live about eight months of every year in New York City. And India is where I always go and where my family also is, and my films often take me there. So it's a balancing act between three homes.

Q: Your films concern Indian subjects but not exclusively.

A: No, whatever makes my heart beat faster. . . . It's not a question of having just India as the terrain, but, naturally, things about India capture me in ways that other things sometimes don't.

Q: In The Namesake, you're dealing with the immigrant experience in a more complex way than you have before.

A: Yes. This is a great story from a great novel. It is set in the two cities where I have grown up, in Calcutta and in New York -- where I formally learned how to see the world.

Q: One of the key themes is how traditions change between the generations. How has that played out in your family?

A: I have one son, born in Kampala. He thinks of himself as "Ugindian." He is 15 and was recently voted president of his school class in Manhattan. He's a kind of cool guy who teaches me how to live.

He's only allowed to speak Hindustani at home. Once you preserve a language, it's a big entry into enjoying aspects of the culture you come from, whether it be Indian movies or songs or music or cricket -- any of that.

Plus we live in three generations. My son has been reared as much by his parents as by his grandparents. I think that's a big dimension to life that Americans have deprived themselves of. I think it's a big difference in how my son sees the world.

Q: The Namesake stars Kal Penn (Van Wilder) in his first dramatic role. How did that come about?

A: Again, I had my son to credit for him. He's the one who told me about Kal and asked me every night, "Mama, tell me it's Kal Penn."

Kal was very keen for the role and threw himself into it. . . . He was so urgent about doing it. And his physicality convinced me that he could play the teenager as well as the dashing young man. He's a very bright man.

Q: With your track record, do you find it getting easier to finance your films?

A: Well, I think it's hard for any independent director. For me, I have a pretty practical head, and I've always produced my own movies. I've also not looked, especially in the early years, to America solely to finance my films. I've found support in Europe and in Japan.

Now I have made so many films that when people come to me for films not originated by me, like Vanity Fair or The Perez Family, they come to me for that sensibility that they have seen in my other films. I like to seesaw, to make an independent film and then a studio film. I like the muscularity between the two.

Q: Most of your cast in Salaam Bombay! was made up of real street kids.

A: Yeah, all of them. And it was shot at real locations.

Q: Were some of the places dangerous?

A: Not dangerous, not like Brazil or parts of the Bronx. It was druggy, but there weren't the guns. The gun laws in India are very strong. It was more the level of poverty.

Q: And now you're preparing a film with Johnny Depp.

A: Yes. (Shantaram) . . . is the story of a heroin addict from Australia who escapes from prison in Melbourne in the '80s and comes to Bombay to disappear and is mistaken for a doctor and works in a slum. He meets people who give him an understanding of what honor is until he achieves it for himself.

Q: And Depp approached you with the project?

A: Yes. I was very honored and happy because it's about time we deal with this continuum between East and West. . . . It's about time we get that right.

Q: How do you know when it's right? Is it in the writing?

A: The writing is the spine of it, but it's about bringing it alive in the performances. It's really in the point of view, in the knowledge of a real place.

If you invent a place, it's never like it really is. And India is very difficult to understand if you're just passing through. I think Johnny embodies that East-West fluidity, and he's very curious about the world.

fgabrenya@dispatch.com

Her body of work

• Salaam Bombay! (1988)

• Mississippi Masala (1991)

• The Perez Family (1995)

• Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)

• My Own Country (1998)

• The Laughing Club of India (1999)

• Monsoon Wedding (2001)

• Hysterical Blindness (2002)

• Vanity Fair (2004)

• The Namesake (2006)

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• , rated PG-13, will open Friday in central Ohio theaters.