Lion: Saroo's Long Way Home

Saroo, born Sheru Munshi Khan, grew up poor in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh. His father had left, his mother worked on building sites, and the boys spent their days at the railway station, begging, scavenging and sweeping out carriages for coins. One evening his elder brother Guddu set off by train to Burhanpur and reluctantly let Saroo come along. The film was shot extensively in and around Khandwa in early 2015, with Sunny Pawar as the young Saroo; the station is still a busy railway junction.

By the time the train reached Burhanpur, about 70 kilometres to the south, Saroo was too tired to go on, so Guddu left him on a platform seat and promised to be back soon. He never came. Waking alone, Saroo climbed into an empty carriage of a waiting train, hoping to find his brother, and fell asleep again; when he woke it was moving and he could not get out. Weeks later the police told his mother that Guddu had been killed by a train about a kilometre from the station.

The train carried him across India to Howrah, Calcutta's huge terminus. He spoke Hindi, not Bengali, and the name he gave for his home — "Ganestalay" in the film — meant nothing to anyone. He tried to get back by boarding other trains, but they were suburban services, and each one brought him back to Howrah. For a week or two he lived in and around the station, sleeping under its seats and scavenging for food. Opened in 1854, Howrah is today the busiest railway complex in India.

Out on the streets, Saroo met adults who seemed kind and were not: in the book a railway worker took him in and he fled when something felt wrong; in the film a woman named Noor lures him home. The film has him living rough near the Howrah Bridge for two months; in reality a teenager eventually took him to the police. He was placed in a government home and then with the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption, which tried and failed to trace his family. The Calcutta scenes were filmed here in January 2015.

Location precision: Saroo's weeks on the streets can't be pinned to one spot; the pin marks the Howrah Bridge, where the film places him.

Declared a lost child, Saroo was adopted by Sue and John Brierley of Hobart, Tasmania, and arrived there in September 1987. A year later the family adopted a second Indian boy, Mantosh, who struggled far more with the move. Saroo learned English, lost his Hindi and grew up Australian, keeping only fragments of memory: a station, the streets of home, a fountain by the tracks. He still lives in Hobart. The film's Tasmanian scenes, with Kidman and David Wenham as his parents, were shot in and around the city.

Location precision: The family home is private; the pin marks central Hobart.

In the film, a plate of jalebis at a friends' dinner in Melbourne brings Saroo's childhood rushing back, and the friends suggest Google Earth. The real Saroo studied hotel management in Canberra and searched for more than six years, following railway lines outward from Howrah and looking for a station that matched his memory of a name like "Berampur". Late one night in 2011 he found Burhanpur, followed the tracks north to Khandwa and recognised the fountain where he used to play. A Khandwa Facebook group confirmed the neighbourhood's name: Ganesh Talai.

Location precision: The search had no single place; the pin marks central Melbourne, where the film sets and shot it.

In 2012 Saroo flew to India, walked into Ganesh Talai with photographs of himself as a child and asked whether anyone remembered a family that had lost a son 25 years earlier. Local people soon led him to his mother, Kamla, who had stayed in the neighbourhood so that he could find her if he ever came back. He also met his sister Shekila and brother Kallu. The film ends with a final revelation: he had mispronounced his own name as a child. It was Sheru — "lion".

Location precision: The family's home is private; the pin marks the Ganesh Talai neighbourhood of Khandwa.