Inspired to be a film maker!

Rating: 9/10 (29 July 2018)

Lion, a film created in 2016 was the most impactful film I have watched in some time. Throughout my life, I have viewed films depicting the adoptee experience, leaving me uninspired to watch more. These films did not elicit deep emotions, such as the film: Somewhere Between, created in 2012. The only emotion this film did evoke was anger; that these films left me wondering about the impact of adoptees being raised with such a limited understanding of their roots and culture. As an international adoptee who was raised in my birth country, I own a different understanding of cultural identity than many international adoptees.
Compared to other films about adoptees, Lion showed more in depth visual experiences of an adoptee who learns his past through his own flashbacks. This led the lead character Soroo to become unsure of his identity and inability to trust in sharing his traumatic memories with his close relatives and friends. For much of his life, he had not questioned his parents reason for adopting, yet he felt conflicted about his flashbacks and feeling the need to be grateful for his current family.
I greatly appreciate knowing that the filmmakers presented a more authentic, realistic, and complex look at the impact of losing one's birth family and culture and more so, to have a missing link to one's identity untouched by the adoptee's adoptive family. Soroo both wanted to find his own truth about his missing past, his memories that he didn't understand, while protecting his adoptive parents from pain.I was engaged analyzing Soroo's complex and sometimes conflicting thoughts and actions as well as his internal drive to find his own truth.The most memorable scene was Soroo's return to his birthplace, knowing that his birth mother had waited for him to find her for fifteen years. Powerful. Compelling.