Maggie Gyllenhaal won Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards for her striking feature directorial debut, adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante.

The Lost Daughter is a powerful psychological drama that follows 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. She is obsessed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach, their relationship (as well as her raucous and menacing extended family) revives her own memories of terror, confusion, and intensity of her own early motherhood. Unfortunately, an impulsive act forces Leda to face the unconventional choices she made when she was younger, and their consequences. Oscar-winner Olivia Colman brilliantly embodies this quietly tempestuous character, finely shading in the enigmatic relationships she creates with these strangers, in this moving, sometimes unsettling inquiry into motherhood and personal freedom.