‘The Lost Daughter’ Filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal & Editor Affonso Goncalves On Pic’s Enigmatic Ending – Crew Call Podcast

‘The Lost Daughter’ Filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal & Editor Affonso Goncalves On Pic’s Enigmatic Ending – Crew Call Podcast

Spoiler Alert: The description below has spoilers about the Netflix movie The Lost Daughter


After a long, dark journey into her soul at a Greek seaside resort, does Olivia Colman’s Leda actually die at the end?


She is stabbed by Nina, the young mother she’s fascinated by, but then…

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“Everyone is so into this,” beams the pic’s director, producer, and writer Maggie Gyllenhaal who makes her feature directorial debut here with the adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel.


“I don’t want to put anything to bed, the only thing I would say, this is not a movie that’s trying to punish this woman,” Gyllenhaal says on today’s Crew Call, “This is a movie about trying to understand, and love and empathize with someone who does something so painful, that causes so much pain to her and the children she loves that it’s almost unbearable.”

“We’re not saying you go outside the box and you get punished,” says Gyllenhaal.

Dakota Johnson, left, and Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter.” Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix

In Lost Daughter, Leda becomes consumed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach. Unnerved by their compelling relationship, (and their raucous and menacing extended family), she is overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood. An impulsive act shocks Leda into the strange and ominous world of her own mind, where she is forced to face the unconventional choices she made as a young mother and their consequences.


“She’s a hero because unlike a lot of us, she’s brave enough to look at the darkest, most painful part of herself and when she does, she finds as often happens, a little bit of of life there.”


We talk with Gyllenhaal and her editor Affonso Gonçalves on how they honed a deft dramatic movie during the pandemic, how they finally knew they had a final cut, and creating a piece of work that’s different from Ferrante’s tome.


“It’s a conversation that we’re having with the book” adds the filmmaker.


Colman is up for Best Actress at the SAG Awards, and was nominated in the Drama Movie Lead Actress category at the Golden Globes with Gyllenhaal also nominated as director. Gyllenhaal won Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival.


Listen to our conversation below: