New York, NY —

India is well-known for its movie industry. And as the Indian population in North America has doubled over the past decade, Indian-American filmmakers are making and showing more films here. Starting tonight at the Walter Reade Theater, the Third Annual Indian Diaspora Film Festival will bring audiences a sampling of these films. WNYC's Alicia Zuckerman has more.

Zuckerman: If you've heard this line before, there might be a reason. The new film Cosmopolitan is based on a short story by Akhil Sharma that first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998. That's Cosmopolitan as in the women's magazine, which lead character Gopal, scoffs at when his grown daughter reads it around the house. But then his wife leaves him and their suburban existence for an ashram back in India, and his daughter takes off trekking in Mongolia with her German boyfriend Hans. Suddenly Gopal played by Indian film star Roshan Seth--sees the magazine as a blueprint for the new life that's been forced upon him. After taking the quiz Is He Relationship Ready? and learning that his score makes him a Ditchable Dude, he consults Cosmo to woo next door neighbor Mrs. Shaw, played by Carol Kane.

Zuckerman: Director Nisha Ganatra, who is 28 and was born in Canada, says her first feature film, Chutney Popcorn, was based on her own experiences as a first-generation Indian-American.

Ganatra: and with Cosmopolitan it's a chance to really talk about our parents generation the people who left India, who came here to make a better life. You know, they had these dreams of retiring and going back to India, and they never do. The get sort of trapped here. And the loneliness of having left behind all of your family and not having put down roots here because you viewed it as temporary, and then what happens when you find out that it isn't so temporary?

Zuckerman: Ganatra says that her film speaks to a universal immigrant experience and even beyond that, simply a universal experience. Of course certain elements of Cosmopolitan are unmistakably Indian.

Ganatra: You can't make an Indian film without a Bollywood sequence, can you? (laughs hard) we didn't even want to try. It was never a consideration.

Zuckerman: Gopal's fantasies are straight out of Bollywood. Everything is exaggerated and vivid the colors, the costumes, the dancing. Carol Kane is decked out in glamorous black and blond wigs, and glittery pink. Kane didn't have to go to Bombay to shoot the scene. The neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, provided an instant set.

Cosmopolitan has its world premiere tonight at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater. The Indian Diaspora Film Festival continues with 16 other films at the Anthology Film Archives through Sunday.

For WNYC, I'm Alicia Zuckerman.