My favorite movie of all time

Rating: Null/10 (21 August 2019)

Lion is my favorite movie of all time. No movie ever impacted me so much emotionally. No movie comes even close.
I saw Lion in theaters in March of 2017. I never heard of it before that day. I only read about it in the program sheet of the theater, which described it as something along the lines of "A boy from India is trying to find his family", a description that doesn't come anywhere close to doing this masterpiece justice.
Lion is based on the book "A Long Way Home", the true autobiography of Saroo Brierley. As a five-year-old Saroo lived in a poor village with his mother, his older brother, and his baby sister. One day his brother is going away to do work at night for a short time, and despite his initial refusal, Saroo convinces him to let him come along and help him. At the train station of destination young Saroo is way too tired to work, so his brother tells him to stay at the station until he comes back. In the middle of the night Saroo wakes up, he's all alone, he desperately looks for his brother in a train at the platform, and falls asleep again, taking him further and further away from home. One day he's adopted to Australia, and as an adult he's looking for his biological family.
I hardly ever cry at movies, but when I said in this theater I was sobbing. Lion is an extremely impactful story that feels the most genuine I've ever seen in a based-on-a-true-story film. Whether as a five-year-old or an adult, you feel for Saroo at every turn. Especially the ending, which I'm not going to spoil, had me cry my eyeballs out. Saroo's search for his biological family and his secrecy about it made a huge impact on the people around him, which was extremely well-realized by the writers. The side characters are also amazing, especially Sue Brierley, Saroo's adoptive mother. There's an immensely powerful scene where she explains why she and her husband chose to adopt Saroo and his adoptive brother Mantosh. The acting is also amazing. Sunny Pawar as young Saroo had one of the best acting debuts I've ever seen. Dev Patel is amazing as adult Saroo, and Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley is one of the stand-outs as well. The film is extremely well-shot and lit as well, which is only amplified by the lack of any effects. After a couple of minutes you'll forget that you're watching a movie. I also loved that half the movie is in Hindi and Bengali, which provides a whole lot of authenticity. Whenever the characters' real counterparts would've talked in English, Hindi or Bengali, they do so in the movie. Literally my only flaw with the movie was that the character of Mantosh was underdeveloped, I would've liked to get to know him a little more.
You won't find out why this movie is called Lion until the very end, but it's a perfect title. Also, if you're living in a country where movies are dubbed into your language, please do NOT watch the dubbed versions, especially not the fully-dubbed ones. The Hindi-Bengali language barrier is an important plotpoint, and it would probably be erased in a dubbed version.
I recommend Lion to you 100%. It's the #1 best movie I've seen in my entire life. It's near damn perfect, it's genuine, it shaped many of my views about adoption and parenting, and I hope it will have the same impact on you!