Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson star in the haunting trailer for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Lost Daughter’

Netflix has released the trailer for actress Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature film directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Colman.

In The Lost Daughter, Leda (Colman) is a middle-aged divorcée devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarrassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier.

Alone on a seaside vacation, Leda becomes consumed with a young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) and daughter as she watches them on the beach (“Children become a crushing responsibility.”) Unnerved by their compelling relationship, and their raucous and menacing extended family, Leda is overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood. An impulsive act shocks her 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.

Review: With ‘The Lost Daughter,’ Maggie Gyllenhaal exposes mother-daughter relations in their vile, discomforting essence [Grade: B]

The film is based on the novel by Elena Ferrante and also stars Jessie Buckley, Academy Award nominee Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard, Dagmara Dominczyk, and Paul Mescal.

The Lost Daughter had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where Gyllenhaal received the award for Best Screenplay. It continued its successful festival run through Telluride, New York and Mill Valley film festivals. Netflix will release The Lost Daughter in select theaters on December 17 and globally on Netflix December 31.

Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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