Visa was earlier denied.
Sunny Pawar, the eight year-old Indian actor from Mumbai, who plays the role of young Saroo in Academy hopeful ‘Lion’, and whom audiences have seemingly fallen in love with the way they did last year with Jacob Tremblay in ‘Room’, has been given a visa after being denied the first-time around, to travel to the United States. He will arrive with his father on Saturday, in Los Angeles.
The move comes after The Weinstein Company, which is distributing Lion, appealed to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection which granted passage for Pawar and his father Dilip Pawar, reported Deadline Hollywood. Lion marks Pawar’s screen debut.
The two have now been granted entrance from India in time to attend the Nov. 16thpremiere of the film in New York alongside co-stars Dev Patel, Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman. And, they will be in Los Angeles earlier to take part in a whirlwind pre-Oscar campaign to help promote the movie.
Pawar co-stars as the little boy who gets separated from his family and is adopted by an Australian couple. As an adult (portrayed by Patel), he researches to find his biological family.
Patel recently told Deadline that he was determined to put up the highest ladders to get Pawar into the U.S. to see his first film.
Time magazine reported that Sunny Pawar portrays the younger version of main character Saroo Bierley, a lost Kolkata boy who survives extreme circumstances (Patel plays the elder version of the character). It’s not a totally fictional movie; Bierley, a businessman, wrote the unflinching book about his personal history that the film was based on, ‘A Long Way Home’, which tells the story of the Australian couple who adopted him and his reunion with his birth mother.
The U.S. consulate in Mumbai had earlier denied the visa Pawar needed to travel to America for the film’s premiere twice without offering an explanation, according to the film’s distributor, the Weinstein Company.
Sunny’s father Dilap Pawar explained the process in a statement to Time.
“We have been back and forth to the embassy many times and have not yet been able to get our Visas,” Dilap wrote in an email.
The family and the Weinstein Company say they began the process of arranging for young Pawar to travel to the U.S. to promote the film at least one month ago. After the first interview process last week at the U.S. Consulate, which included Pawar’s father, the family was disappointed to learn Sunny was denied entry, but not deterred.
The Weinstein Company said they also offered the embassy a letter outlining the specifics of his temporary visit, proposing that his father and a guardian who speaks both Hindi and English would accompany Pawar.
By the second interview Thursday morning, Pawar was still excited about the prospect of making the trip to participate in the promotional efforts for the movie, which opens Nov. 25. On Thursday, the visa officer requested an additional itinerary, adding “we are trying are best to get you to the United States as soon as possible. Congratulations Sunny! on the success of your film.” But the office will be closed to honor Veteran’s Day Friday, and Sunny will likely miss his chance to attend.
Weinstein has worked with attorney David Boies on this effort.
“Lion is a true story of love, inclusiveness, and human commitment unbounded by race, religion, or ethnicity,” Boies said in a statement after the visa was denied. “The government’s preventing the 8-year-old star of that movie from visiting this country shows how much we need to be reminded that those are our nation’s core values.”