Academy Award® nominee Rooney Mara (SIDE EFFECTS, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), David Wenham (BANISHED, TOP OF THE LAKE) and Divian Ladwa (DETECTORISTS) have joined Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel in the stellar cast of the feature film LION.

Also featuring in the film are several of India’s best-known actors including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chatterjee and Deepti Naval.

After completing several weeks on location in India, LION begins filming in in Melbourne and Hobart in mid April.

Adapted from the incredible true story “A Long Way Home” written by Saroo Brierley with Larry Buttrose, LION is directed by Garth Davis (TOP OF THE LAKE) from a screenplay by Luke Davies (CANDY, LIFE).

The project is being produced by See-Saw Films in association with Sunstar Entertainment and Aquarius Films. Emile Sherman, Iain Canning and Angie Fielder are producing with Andrew Fraser and Shahen Mekertichian executive producing.

In LION, five-year-old Saroo finds himself alone and travelling on the wrong train away from his home in northern India. Frightened and bewildered, he winds up thousands of kilometers away, in chaotic Kolkata.

Somehow he survives living on the streets, dodging all sorts of terrors in the process. Eventually ending up in an orphanage, Saroo is adopted by an Australian couple, and finds safety and love as he grows up in Hobart. Not wanting to hurt his adoptive parents’ feelings, he buries his past, his emotional need for reunification and his hope of ever finding his lost mother and brother.

But a chance meeting with some fellow Indians reawakens his secret yearnings. With just a small store of memories, and the help of a new technology called Google Earth, Saroo embarks on one of the greatest needle-in-a-haystack quests of modern times…the search for where he came from.

Producers Emile Sherman and Iain Canning of See-Saw Films said:  “We are thrilled with the incredible work of our cast and crew in India and look forward to welcoming Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, Dev Patel, David Wenham and Divian Ladwa to the Australian leg of the shoot.”

Transmission Films will distribute LION in Australia and New Zealand. The Weinstein Company acquired LION at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where they closed the deal for worldwide distribution excluding Australia and New Zealand. The film is being co-financed by Screen Australia.