Lion is the heartbreaking and inspiring original true story of the lost little boy who found his way home twenty-five years later and is now a major film starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara.

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Some time ago I had the incredible experience of seeing the movie "Saroo".

The movie is about the true and unbelievable story of Saroo, a 5 year old Indian boy, who lives somewhere in the Indian mainland together with his mother,  his big brother  and his little sister. Saroo's mother works in breaking stones all day long for a low pay. During the day she leaves Saroo to take care of  his little sister. While doing so,  he walks and wanders around his village and gets to know the village surroundings. One day,  he goes by train with his brother to help him work.  At the train station his brother leaves him and Saroo falls asleep on the train station's bench.  When he wakes up he doesn't know where his brother is.  He searches for him on the train and suddenly finds himself on a moving one that is taking him to the unknown.

He arrives in Calcutta and goes through very dangerous and traumatizing adventures. He has the great luck of being chosen to be adopted by a family in Tasmania, a big and  beautiful Australian island. The adopting family is very sweet and loving.  When he grows up,  he becomes obsessed by the idea of finding his home and his family back but unfortunately  has no family name and no idea of the name or the place he comes from in India.  In the end,  thanks to his unbelievable visual memory, to his strong determination to find home  and to Google Earth,  he finally and miraculously finds his village and his mother. With its breathtaking cinematography, this impressive movie throws the viewer into the harsh and cruel reality of the lower castes in India and later into the beautiful panoramas of Tasmania. We literally go through all of his adventures together with Saroo. We feel what he feels,  suffer what he suffers,  fear what he fears and rejoice at what he rejoices.

I was so deeply moved and impressed (and sadly even horrified) by the movie that I started to enquire more about the real Saroo. I learned,  to my great dismay,  that according to the statistics,  every year 80.000 children are lost to their parents in India and that there are 11.000000 children living in the street with no parents in the Indian subcontinent.  This data on one hand deeply  appalled me and made me feel totally helpless in front of such a terrible tragedy,  On the other hand it made me feel how fortunate we are here in Israel,  a country where every child's life is precious and where no effort is spared in helping every child in distress,  whether it's physical or psychological..

To sum up, I think that this is a "must see" movie that touches upon many deep issues,  such as working and living condition in the third world countries,  childhood resilience and traumas,  the complexity of adoption for both the parents and the child,  longing for home,  determination and the role of luck in life.