Q&A: The Lost Daughter, with Director and Writer Maggie Gyllenhaal and Producers Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman

Join WFTV and Netflix for a conversation with Oscar and BAFTA nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal, Director, Writer and Producer, with Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman Keren, Producers on The Lost Daughter. Gyllenhaal, whose award-winning career as an actress is full of ground breaking and thought provoking performances, will discuss the journey of her directorial debut with her screen adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter. The film follows how a woman’s beach vacation takes a dark turn when her obsession with a young mother forces her to confront the secrets of her past.

Directed and written by Gyllenhaal, who won the Best Screenplay prize at the Venice Film Festival, the cast includes Oscar nominee Olivia Colman, Oscar and BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson. Gyllenhaal, along with along with Kleinhendler and Handelsman Keren, will discuss their experiences working on the film, the creative challenge and the journey to share the film with audiences at festivals across the world. This session will be chaired by broadcaster and writer Francine Stock.

Speakers

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Writer, Director, Producer)

Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose award-winning career as an actress is full of groundbreaking and thought-provoking performances, is making her directorial debut with her screen adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter (starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley).

Gyllenhaal won acclaim in 2002 for Secretary, starring opposite James Spader, for which she won a National Board of Review award and both Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominations. She followed with Laurie Collyer’s Sherrybaby (2006), a painful look at a young woman getting out of prison and hoping to reclaim her child, which earned her a second Golden Globe nomination. In 2009, she starred opposite Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, earning her an Oscar nomination. Other notable film performances include Donnie Darko (2001), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), Stranger Than Fiction (2006), The Dark Night (2008), Nanny McPhee Returns (2010), Frank (2014) and The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) among many others.

Gyllenhaal moved into television with BBC/Sundance’s The Honorable Woman (2014), for which she won a Golden Globe Award and SAG and Emmy nominations.  And in 2019, Gyllenhaal concluded her three-season run as the sex worker Candy who becomes a film director in the HBO drama The Deuce, which she also produced. Her performance earned her rave reviews, and both Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations.

She’s equally at home on stage. She played Priscilla in Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul (2004) in both Los Angeles and at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). She also starred as Yelena in Uncle Vanya (2009) and Masha in The Three Sisters (2011), both alongside her husband Peter Sarsgaard in Austin Pendleton’s productions at the Classic Stage Company. She debuted on Broadway in Sam Gold’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing opposite Ewan McGregor in 2014.

Her readings of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar can be heard on Audible. She also collaborated with artist Matthew Barney on the experimental film River of Fundament in 2014.

Gyllenhaal graduated from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Talia Kleinhendler & Osnat Handelsman Keren (Producers)

Talia Kleinhendler & Osnat Handelsman Keren are the producing team behind Pie Films, one of Israel’s most prolific and successful production companies. Pie Films produces multiple award-winning films, set up as international co-productions, which have premiered in Cannes, Venice, Telluride, Sundance, Berlin and Toronto. Recent Films include Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson and Ed Harris premiering in Venice IFF 2021 and Cannes 2021 Jury prize winner Ahed’s Knee by Nadav Lapid. They also produced Nadav Lapid’s film Synonyms, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2019 and The Kindergarten Teacher remade from their Israeli film by the same name, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and written and directed by Sara Colangelo, premiered at Sundance 2018 as part of the US dramatic competition and won the Best Director award.

Host

Francine Stock 

Francine Stock is a broadcaster and writer who has fronted a range of arts and current affairs programmes mainly for BBC Television and Radio, including for seventeen years The Film Programme on BBC Radio 4 which built a substantial UK and international podcast following. Her published work includes novels and film criticism, as well as a study of the cultural and political influence of cinema, In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How It Has Shaped Us.

Event Schedule:

18:25: Please join the webinar waiting room

18:30: In conversation with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman Keren

19:15: Attendee Q&A opens

19:30: Finish

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