Lion Trivia Quiz

Answer: Milk

Saroo lives with his family near Khandwa village in West India. His mother, Kamla, works hard breaking rocks to make ends meet for her family. He also has an older brother, Guddu, and a younger sister, Shekila. Milk is seen as a treat by the family and something that they would rarely be able to afford. The gift of milk from Saroo and Guddu establishes the loyalty and love they feel towards their family.

In the film, Saroo is portrayed by two different actors; the young Saroo by Sunny Pawar and the older Saroo by Dev Patel. Sunny was chosen from over 2000 boys to play the young Saroo and was only eight years old at the time of filming. When he first started shooting the film he was unable to speak English and bonded with some of the other cast members by playing cricket.

Answer: Calcutta

Unbeknownst to Saroo, the train has travelled around 1000 miles (1600 km) East to the vast city of Calcutta. Originally hailing from a rural village, the young Saroo is bewildered by the city and he struggles to survive, sleeping rough and stealing food before he is eventually taken into an orphanage.

Jaipur is located in the Northern state of Rajasthan while Mumbai is in the West (in Maharashtra) and Chennai is in the South (in Tamil Nadu).

At the beginning of 2001, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya officially renamed Calcutta to Kolkata to try and shrug of any reminder of the British Raj. Other cities that were renamed in the late 20th or early 21st century include Bombay to Mumbai in 1996 and Madras to Chennai in the same year.

Answer: Australia

Saroo is adopted by the Australian couple John and Sue Brierley, played by David Wenham and Nicole Kidman respectively. Before Saroo travels he is taught some basics about his new life, including how to use a knife and fork and how to say 'salt' and 'pepper'. He is also given a jumper that says 'TASMANIA' in big letters on the front to help him feel more at home.

His new parents meet him at the airport in Australia and are absolutely delighted to see him. While he is initially shy, Saroo soon adapts to his new life and forms a strong bond with his adopted family.

Answer: Mantosh

Mantosh is not as easy going as Saroo and struggles to settle into the family when he first arrives in Australia. This strained relationship with his parents is developed later in the film when we find out that Mantosh general avoids contact with them and has had problems with drug abuse in the intervening years.

Despite their difficulties, Saroo and Mantosh maintain a strong brotherly friendship throughout the film and Saroo refuses to give up on Mantosh.

Answer: Rooney Mara

When the students in the hotel management course are asked why they are doing the course Lucy says that she wants to make people happy, while Saroo makes the class laugh by saying that he's in it for the money. Lucy and Saroo form an almost instant connection which later develops into a relationship.

Rooney Mara first came to international prominence with her role in the 2010 film 'The Social Network' and went on to play the leading role in the American version of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', for which she was Oscar nominated. Other major roles include Catherine in Spike Jonze's 'Her' and Therese in the 2015 romantic drama 'Carol'.

Kirsten Dunst appeared in 'Hidden Figures', another Oscar-nominated film in 2017, while Brie Larson won the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the 2016 ceremony for her work in the film 'Room'.

Answer: Jalebi

The jalebi is a sweet, fried snack food popular across the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Often presented in a pretzel-like shape, they are made by tubing sugar syrup-coated wheat-flour batter into a pan of hot oil.

When Saroo sees the jalebis at the party he is transported back to his childhood in which he regularly saw jalebis at the market stall with his brother Guddu. This moment in the film pays homage to the novel 'In Search of Lost Time' by Marcel Proust in which the trigger food is a madeleine as opposed to a jalebi.

Answer: Google Earth

The intensity of Saroo's remembrance of the day in which he lost his family is such that he is able to identify several key features of the train station he was at when he got on the train. A friend tells him about the existence of Google Earth and he then works out roughly how long he was on the train and uses the average speed of a train in India in the 1980s to work out a huge circle of possible locations in which he may find his family.

Google Earth provides satellite images of the entire surface of the globe, with the option to overlay maps such as train lines if required. This allows Saroo to systematically check each train station in the zone of possible locations.

Answer: Watermelon

The young Saroo is somewhat small in stature, so carrying a watermelon is far from a trivial task. His flashback shows how he was holding the watermelon up in the air and was thus unable to see the approaching motorbike. The fact that Saroo still has the scar from this event in his childhood is symbolic of how his youth in India is still with him despite the fact that he is now fully grown.

Other flashbacks in this period of the film include his remembrance of his brother Guddu taking food from the plates of diners in a crowded marketplace.

Answer: False

Searching Google Earth to look at train stations takes over Saroo's life, jeopardising his relationships with both Lucy and his adopted family, as well as causing him to drop out of his course. He eventually manages to admit to his adopted parents what he has been doing with his time and they are instantly accepting and understanding. His fears that they would be angry or upset are unfounded and he feels comforted.

He then asks Sue if she wishes that she could have had children of her own. She answers that both her and John were capable of having children but that they felt that there were so many children in need across the world that it seemed like a better decision to adopt those that had already been born and try and make their lives better.

Answer: Yes

Thankfully he does, though it takes him a very long time (two years!). Eventually he finds a similar train station to the one in which he got lost by recognising a water tower and begins to discover that more and more of the nearby landscape and infrastructure is familiar to him.

When he flies to his village to try and find his family there is a joyous reunion; his mother and sister are still living in the same village and they had always had hope that he would return one day. The film ends with footage of the real-life Saroo Brierley being reunited with family.