The eight-year-old Indian star of a film starring Nicole Kidman has reportedly been denied a US visa he needed to attend its New York premiere.
The Weinstein Company, which is distributing the film, says Sunny Pawar was due to fly with his father to Los Angeles and New York for screenings of the film Lion, which also stars Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara.
Sunny plays Saroo Brierley, a young boy who becomes lost on the streets of Kolkata and ends up in an orphanage before being adopted by an Australian couple. Twenty-five years later, the adult Saroo –now played by Dev Patel – uses Google Earth to find the family from which he was separated.
Sunny dominates the screen for much of the movie’s first hour. The project marks his acting debut and has already earned him raves.
The Weinstein Company is attempting to obtain a last-minute visa for Sunny and his father, but fear that it may have been denied due to immigration concerns. “We are doing everything we can to fight this,” Weinstein Company president David Glasser said.
“We believe it must be the effect of immigration paranoia. He, of course, poses absolutely no threat to anyone. We want him to be a part of the celebration of this film and his performance. We fully intend to go through the proper resources and appeal with the State Department for assistance.”
The Weinstein Company has tapped David Boies, founding partner of Boies Schiller & Flexner and one of the attorneys who argued for passing marriage equality before the US Supreme Court, to help with the matter.
“Lion is a true story of love, inclusiveness, and human commitment unbounded by race, religion, or ethnicity,” Boies said in a statement. “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.”
Sunny did not attend the film’s screening at the Toronto film festival.
The film is scheduled to release on November 25.