Lion is a 2016 Australian biographical drama film directed by Garth Davis (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Luke Davies based on the 2013 nonfiction book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley. The film stars Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, and Nicole Kidman, as well as Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. It tells the true story of how Brierley, 25 years after being separated from his family in India, set out to find them. It was a joint production between Australia and the United Kingdom. The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2016, was given a limited release in North America on 25 November 2016 by the Weinstein Company before opening wide on 6 January 2017. It was released in Australia on 19 January 2017 and in the United Kingdom on 20 January 2017. Lion was well-received by critics, with praise for the acting (particularly Patel's and Kidman's), emotional weight, visuals, cinematography, and screenplay. It received six Oscar nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, including for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Patel), Best Supporting Actress (Kidman), and Best Adapted Screenplay. At the 70th British Academy Film Awards, the film won the BAFTA Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Patel) and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was also commercially successful, making $140 million worldwide and becoming one of the highest-grossing Australian films of all time.
Plot In 1986, five-year-old Saroo lives with his elder brother, Guddu; his baby sister, Shekila; and his mother in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India. Saroo accompanies Guddu to work, and they arrive at a nearby train station, where Saroo falls asleep on a bench and is unable to find Guddu upon waking. He searches for him on an empty train, only to fall asleep in one of the compartments and wake later to find the train in motion and the doors locked. After several days, the train arrives in faraway Calcutta, where Saroo does not understand the local Bengali language. He tries to obtain a ticket home, but the attendant does not recognise the name of his village, which Saroo says is "Ganestalay". He spends the night in the station with some street children and flees when a group of men tries to kidnap them. Saroo wanders around the city before meeting Noor, a seemingly friendly woman who takes him back to her apartment and tells him that a man named Rama will help him find his way home. Saroo escapes, sensing that Noor and Rama have sinister intentions, and evades Noor when she chases him. After two months of living near the Howrah Bridge, Saroo is taken to the police and placed into an orphanage when authorities are unable to find his family. An advertisement about Saroo is placed in local newspapers. No one responds, but an Australian couple has become interested in adopting him. Saroo is taught basic English and moves to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1987, under the care of Sue and John Brierley. A year later, the Brierleys adopt another boy, Mantosh, who has trouble adjusting to his new home and suffers from rage and self-harm. Twenty years later, Saroo moves to Melbourne to study hotel management and starts a relationship with an American student, Lucy. When asked where he's from, he responds that he's from Calcutta. During a meal with some Indian friends at their home, Saroo recognises the jalebis, a dish that he had loved as a child. He reveals that he is not from Calcutta and was separated from his birth family more than 20 years earlier. His friends suggest he use Google Earth to search for his hometown. Saroo begins to do research and becomes obsessive and withdraws from Lucy and his adoptive family, without telling the latter about his search for his biological family. Eventually, after hearing his adoptive mother is not doing well because he has pulled away and Mantosh (who has substance abuse issues) has gone missing, Saroo visits her to apologise and learns that she is not infertile, as he had always assumed, but wanted to help children in need through adoption. One night, Saroo recognises the rock formations where his mother worked and finds the area where he lived: the Ganesh Talai neighbourhood of the Khandwa district. After reconciling with Lucy, he tells his adoptive mother about his search, and she fully supports his efforts. Saroo returns to Ganesh Talai and, with the help of a local English speaker, has an emotional reunion with his biological mother and sister, but is heartbroken to learn that Guddu was hit and killed by a train the night they were separated. His mother remained in the village for the 25 years since he went missing because she never gave up hope that he would return. In addition to mispronouncing his home village's name, Saroo learns that he also mispronounced his own name as a child, as his biological parents named him not "Saroo" but "Sheru", meaning "lion".
Cast
Production
Writing An Australian film, Lion is based on Saroo Brierley's memoir A Long Way Home. In an interview, screenwriter Luke Davies acknowledged the challenges of adapting a book that is primarily about an online search:
It was finding the right balance of the big cinema "no-no", which is that screens on screens is not good. Yet we felt very strongly that our situation was quite different from the usual procedural crime drama TV model, where there are a whole bunch of actors that are crammed with exposition-heavy dialogue pointing at computer screens. We felt that we were a million miles away from that. The relationship with the technology was instigated by a purely and deeply emotional drive and desire to make it to the end of the myth—to find wholeness with the reunification with the lost mother and to find out who you are.
Casting Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman were cast in the film in October 2014. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chatterjee, and Deepti Naval joined the cast in January 2015; Rooney Mara, David Wenham, and Divian Ladwa were cast in April; and Pallavi Sharda joined the cast in August.
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