Mira Nair is worldly–born in India, educated at Harvard, married to a Ugandan, at home in Manhattan—but the director of the new biography “Amelia,” which opens Friday, found a kindred spirit in a girl from a small town in Kansas. “I come from a place that’s even smaller than Amelia Earhart’s hometown of Atchison,” Nair said in a recent phone interview. “I know what it’s like to be born without money or privilege, to want to see the world.

“When I was 10 years old, an airport opened near my village. I used to go there and watch the Fokker Friendships come and go, and I knew that I would be on one of those planes someday.”

Unlike Earhart, Nair didn’t pilot the plane that transported her to a new life; but the director has proven that she’s not afraid to take risks. Her films include a Oscar-nominated drama set in the slums of Mumbai (“Salaam Bombay!”), an inter-racial love story set in the American South (“Mississipi Masala”), an epic romance set in 19th century London (“Vanity Fair”) and a multilingual, matrimonial comedy (the hit “Monsoon Wedding,” which was released as a special-edition DVD this week by the Criterion Collection).

Nair also contributed a segment to the anthology film “New York I Love You, “ opening locally next Friday, in which 10 directors were given two days to shoot mini movies about life in Big Apple.

Nair, 52, teaches film at Columbia University in Manhattan, but she spends several months each year in her professor husband’s native Africa. That’s where much of “Amelia” was filmed, in the actual places where the pioneering aviatrix stopped on her flight around the world in 1937. The project gave Nair her first experience directing special effects; yet she kept the focus on a singular human. “The point of the effects and the wide-screen cinematography was to convey the ecstasy of flying in an era when it was still mysterious. I wanted you to feel the beating heart of a life fully lived.”

Although Earhart and her navigator disappeared en route to a tiny Pacific fuel stop called Howland Island, Nair doesn’t think of it as a tragic story.

“Amelia was a very modern woman who lived life on her own terms, but with grace. She set an example that women from humble origins can accomplish things that were never imagined.”

Here’s a trailer for “Amelia,” starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor: