Saroo Brierley

A 2016 film based on his life, Lion, directed by Garth Davis and starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara, premiered to rave reviews and "Oscar buzz" at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, though it ultimately did not win an Oscar in any of the six categories for which it was nominated. Saroo was portrayed in the film by Dev Patel, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and newcomer Sunny Pawar. In April 2019 he announced that he is conducting a search for his father who left him and his family when he was a young child.

An autobiographical account of his experiences, A Long Way Home, was published in 2013 in Australia, released internationally in 2014, and adapted into the 2016 film Lion, starring Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel as Saroo, and Nicole Kidman as his adoptive mother, Sue Brierley.

In 2013, Saroo published his book, A Long Way Home (Penguin Australia), describing his ordeal as a lost five-year-old, his adoption by an Australian family, and his search for his Indian family.

In 2012, Saroo travelled to Khandwa in India and asked residents if they knew of any family that had lost their son 25 years ago. He showed photographs of himself as a child in Hobart. Local people soon led him to his mother. He was also reunited with his sister, Shekila, and his surviving brother, Kallu, who were now a schoolteacher and factory manager, respectively. With Saroo and Guddu gone, their mother had been able to afford to send the other two to school. The reunion was extensively covered by Indian and international media.

He studied business and hospitality at the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra. As an adult, he spent many hours over many months conducting searches using the satellite images on Google Earth, painstakingly following railway lines radiating out from Howrah railway station. He relied on his vague memories of the main features around Burhanpur railway station, although he knew little of the name of the station except that it began with the letter B. Late one night in 2011, he came upon a small railway station that closely matched his childhood recollection of where he had become trapped in an empty carriage; the name of this station was Burhanpur, very close to a phonetic spelling of the name he remembered from his childhood ordeal. He followed the satellite images of the railway line north and found the town of Khandwa. He had no recollection of that name, but the town contained recognizable features, such as a fountain near the train tracks where he used to play. He was able to trace a path through the streets to what appeared to be the place where he and his family used to live.

Saroo Brierley (born May 22, 1981) is an Indian-born Australian businessman and author who, at age five, was accidentally separated from his biological mother. He was adopted by an Australian couple and, 25 years later, reunited with his biological mother after finding his hometown via Google Earth. His story generated significant international media attention, especially in Australia and India.