Lion

Short Cuts: Garth Davis delivers tears of sadness and joy in Lion, a weepy true story of a 5-year-old Indian lad who gets lost 1,000 miles from home, enters the world of India's lost children and is adopted by an Australia couple, saving him from certain deprivation and exploitation. The rest of the film is 25 years on, as the boy wonders about his home, his mother and siblings. Dev Patel plays Saroo as an adult but the marvelous child actor Sunny Pawar is the heart of this moving tale,  which delivers breathtaking vistas and squalor but too much cinematic shorthand to draw us deeply into what must be an amazing story.