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.
Saroo continues to wander 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 is taught basic English and moves to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1987, under the care of Sue and John Brierley, where he slowly starts to settle into his new lifestyle.
Twenty years later, Saroo, now a young man, moves to Melbourne to study hotel management and starts a relationship with American student Lucy.
Feeling overwhelmed by how much more ground is left to cover in his search, 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.
Saroo returns to his hometown and, with the help of a local English speaker, has an emotional reunion with his biological mother and sister, but he is heartbroken to learn that Guddu was hit and killed by a train the same night they were separated.
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.
[14] Other songs featured in the film include "Blind" by Hercules and Love Affair, "State of the Heart" by Mondo Rock, and "The Rivers of Belief" by Enigma.
In one scene, the character of Noor sings along with "Come Closer", an iconic track from 'Disco King' Bappi Lahiri from the film Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki (1984).
[23] A special red carpet charity event for the Tasmanian premiere of Lion was attended by the film's subject, Saroo Brierley, and his family at the State Cinema in December 2016.
[28] On the weekend of 17–19 March 2017, Lion crossed the $50 million mark at the North American box-office, becoming the fifth 2016 film among the Academy Award for Best Picture nominees to surpass this threshold.
The website's consensus reads: "Lion's undeniably uplifting story and talented cast make it a moving journey that transcends the typical cliches of its genre.
"[35] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Greig Fraser's cinematography portrays the beauty of the country, both honestly and exquisitely [...] Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, in the film's Australian second half, give wonderful performances too.
For example, Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote: "though wrenching, there is barely enough of it to fill the dramatic space, and the second half is a slow and muted affair after the Dickensian punch of the first.