‘The Lost Daughter’: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson & Peter Sarsgaard Set For Maggie Gyllenhaal’s EFM-Bound Directorial Debut

Andreas Wiseman
·2 min read

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Oscar-winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite), Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl), Dakota Johnson (Bad Times At The El Royale) and Peter Sarsgaard (Jackie) are set to star in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter, we can reveal.

Endeavor Content will launch world sales at the upcoming EFM on Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s hit novel. This will be one of the hot projects at the market for sure.

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Producing are Gyllenhaal, and Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman-Keren, through their company Pie Films and Charlie Dorfman. Endeavor Content and Charlie Dorfman, through his Samuel Marshall Productions, are the financiers.

The film will follow Leda (Colman), an elegant college professor on a seaside summer vacation, who becomes consumed by Nina (Johnson) and her young daughter, as she watches them on the beach. Unnerved by their compelling relationship, and their raucous and menacing extended family, she becomes overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood.

Forced to consider the unconventional choices she made as a young mother and the consequences they had for her family, she begins to unravel. Lost in ways she can’t explain, she finds herself caught in the strange and ominous world of her own mind.

Gyllenhall said, “When I finished reading Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, I felt that something secret and true had been said out loud. And I was both disturbed and comforted by that. I immediately thought how much more intense the experience would be in a movie theatre, with other people around. And I set to work on this adaptation. I find that the script has attracted other people interested in exploring these secret truths about motherhood, sexuality, femininity, desire. And I’m thrilled to continue my collaboration with such brave and exciting actors and filmmakers.”

Pie Films recently produced 2019 Berlin Golden Bear winner Synonyms by Nadav Lapid as well as the two versions of drama The Kindergarten Teacher. Gyllenhaal starred in the U.S. version, which won a Sundance directors award 2018.

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