'Lion' Trailer: Dev Patel Searches For His Long Lost Family

Producer Harvey Weinstein sees awards potential in Lion, one of the two contenders he's betting on this fall. The other awards hopeful film coming from TWC, in Harvey Weinstein's eyes, is The Founder, based on the life of Ray Kroc. While that biopic is about a man driven by greed, Lion is a more kind-hearted and inspiring tale, about a man (Dev Patel) searching for his family.

Below, watch the Lion trailer.

Starring alongside Patel are Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, and (an actor I'm always delighted to see) David Wenham. Wenham and Kidman, who co-starred in Australia, play Saroo Brierley's (Patel) adoptive parents. At the age of five, Saroo found himself lost in Calcutta. Unable to find his family, the young boy was then adopted by an Australian couple. 25 years later, he decides to search for his birth parents and brother. Written by Luke Davies (Life), Lion is based on a true story that Saroo first told in his non-fiction novel A Long Way Home.

Here's the Lion trailer:

The drama is Garth Davis' first feature film, but he also directed five episodes of the acclaimed series Top of the Lake. Davis is already again working with Rooney Mara again on a Mary Magdalene biopic, so it's easy to assume the two were happy with their experience on Lion, which looks like a potentially emotional and moving drama. Nicole Kidman has been making some excellent choices lately, too – The Family Fang, The Killing of a Sacred Dear, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Big Little Lies, and Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled – so her involvement also inspires some confidence.

Here's the synopsis from Tiff:

From the production team that brought us The King's Speech comes Lion: the incredible true story of Saroo Brierley and his 25-year odyssey. Precocious five-year-old Saroo Khan is always up for an adventure. Eager to help his older brother Guddu with any odd job that will provide their family with much-needed money, Saroo follows Guddu everywhere he goes. One night the two boys are separated on a train platform in their native Madhya Pradesh, and Saroo winds up nearly a thousand miles away in Calcutta. Homeless in a strange city where he doesn't speak the language, Saroo gets by on his street smarts until he is taken in by a government orphanage. When an Australian couple adopts him, he is taken to live with them in Hobart, Tasmania. It's not until Saroo leaves that island as a young Australian man that he begins to wonder what became of his first home and the family he so adored. Ingeniously using satellite images from Google Earth, he finds a lead to follow up on. But the search for Saroo's past threatens to overwhelm his present, and he finds himself further adrift than he ever imagined possible.

Lion opens in theaters November 25th.