'Lion' Details Mothers' Love, Transcending Continents

Journey is one of those overused words in Hollywood; actors, directors, writers and producers are forever talking about a film or a character’s journey, to the point where, when a story is actually an incredible journey, they need to find a new trope.

Lion, the Oscar-nominated film based on Saroo Brierley’s memoir, A Long Way Home, details the determined quest the author, adopted from India by an Australian couple in 1987, made to find his birth family. It also casts a light on the complicated nature of international adoption and our conflicted feelings about race and nationality at a time when migration is, for many, a trigger word.

Growing Up Australian

Brierley was born in a small village in western India. After his father abandoned the family, his mother, Kamla, struggled to feed her four children, carrying stones at construction. “There was no choice in the matter; hunger was simply a fact of life, like the searing heat and the constantly buzzing flies.”