Dev Patel unearths his past in the Lion trailer

We’re coming up on Serious Movie Season, and thus here we have another trailer for a based-on-a-true-story film aiming to tug at your heartstrings. In Lion, Dev Patel stars as Saroo Brierley, a man adopted at a young age by an Australian couple. Saroo, who was separated from his brother in a train station during his youth, goes searching for his birth family with the help of Google Earth. Hey, look! A movie involving the Internet, which doesn’t glorify the contributions of one white man or spell doom and gloom for society.

Anyway, the first look at the project from director Garth Davis introduces us to an adult Saroo, beginning to remember details of his past life. “I had another family, a mother, a brother,” he says. “I can still see their faces.” Davis relies on flashbacks to dramatize Saroo’s past, while Nicole Kidman plays his adopted mother. Rooney Mara also appears.

After stops on the festival circuit, Lion is due out in theaters November 25.