Row K Seat 17 "Lion" rated PG 118mins SPOILER ALERT

"A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometres from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family."

Based on a true story...

   Saroo Brierley is delivered to an adoptive family as arranged in Tasmania. Restless and determined to understand his own story he really does try to use Google Earth to find his mother and family. It's a story beautifully and movingly told in both India and Tasmania [and Melbourne].

   It's about identity, choices, finding yourself and your path in life. It reflects on real circumstances and consequences in a world of such disparity where we have recently been reminded the world's eight most wealthy people have as much as 50% of the world's poorest. But go further, most of us in Australia would make the top 1-4%.

   Sue Brierley and her husband adopted two Indian boys and that was not without it's costs and challenges but their story is real and inspired. In the same way the film's production company have launched a charity to assist 'lost' children in India.

   It's easily the most I've teared up in a film for some time, it's not sad, it's moving and real and taps anyone's story about their identity and the experiences that shape a life, including mine. 

   The specifics of India are ever present but drop away to reveal the personal stories that happen in that place. The Australian connection, accents and time in history give the film a texture unlike big budget American films. We are fortunate the Weinsten's didn't transplant the story as a generic US story but stayed true to Saroo's life and journey as celebrated by him in the local media and premiered here in recent weeks around Christmas!!

   Visions, ever present people in our stories, faith and one's place in the world offer a rich spirituality within this story of place and people. I would happily watch it again, soon!!