Maggie Gyllenhaal and Cast on The Lost Daughter | NYFF59

NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by The Lost Daughter writer & director Maggie Gyllenhaal and cast members Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Dagmara Dominczyk to discuss their Spotlight selection of this year’s festival. The NYFF59 screenings of The Lost Daughter are presented by Citi. Based on the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante, Gyllenhaal’s screen adaptation stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a divorced professor on a solitary summer vacation who becomes intrigued and then oddly involved in the lives of another family she meets there. Our wide-ranging discussion covers everything from hometown filmmaker Gyllenhaal’s initial fascination with Ferrante’s four Neapolitan Novels to how she eventually assembled her incredible cast. Also discussed are Johnson’s breaking down the unique motivations of her character, Nina, as the story progresses, and how Mescal prepared for his role, his very first in a motion picture.