Patel as Saroo with Mara as Lucy, his girlfriend in Australia. Explains producer Canning, “Lucy is an amalgamation of several of [Saroo’s] girlfriends.”
Mark Rogers/Long Way Home Productions/The Weinstein CompanyLuke Davies will receive the award for best adapted screenplay for Lion at the Capri Hollywood International Film Festival in a special ceremony Dec. 29 at the Cinema Paradiso in Anacapri.
Adapted from Saroo Brierley’s memoir A Long Way Home, the film tells the incredible true story of an adopted Indian boy who searches for his family after he was stranded at a train station as a child. Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel feature in the starring role of Saroo, with Nicole Kidman and David Wenham playing his adoptive parents. Rooney Mara also stars as his love interest.
“Lion is a wonderful, uplifting tale brought to the big screen through great storytelling, and for this reason it deserves the Capri Award as well as many other awards,” Capri president Lina Wertmuller, the first woman ever nominated for a best director Academy Award, said Monday in a statement.
“It’s a universal story about family values that reaches the hearts of audiences worldwide,” added festival director Pascal Vicedomini. “We all wish there were more movies like this to show to the younger generation.”
The Capri Hollywood Festival, held on the Italian resort island off the coast of Naples, takes place every year over the New Year’s holiday and is generally considered to be a key campaign stop on the road to the Oscars. This year’s edition is dedicated to Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis.
Previous awards announced include best ensemble cast to Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, producer of the year to Hacksaw Ridge’s Bill Mechanic, best documentary and European film of the year to Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea and best European director to Florence Foster Jenkins’ Stephen Frears.
The festival is set to open Dec. 27 with Taylor Hackford’s The Comedian, starring Robert De Niro and Danny DeVito, and runs through Jan. 2.
