which would you recommend?
which is faster, reliable?
apache mod_python or nginx/lighttpd FastCGI?
I've done both, and Apache/mod_python tended to be easier to work with and more stable. But these days I've jumped over to Apache/mod_wsgi, which is everything I've ever wanted and more:

Easy management of daemon processes.
As a result, much better process isolation (running multiple sites in the same Apache config with mod_python almost always ends in trouble -- environment variables and C extensions leak across sites when you do that).
Easy code reloads (set it up right and you can just touch the .wsgi file to reload instead of restarting Apache).
More predictable resource usage. With mod_python, a given Apache child process' memory use can jump around a lot. With mod_wsgi it's pretty stable: once everything's loaded, you know that's how much memory it'll use.
Running Django with FastCGI or with mod_python