The Lost Daughter

"An outstanding debut."

— Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

"Gyllenhaal has forged a powerful new myth. She and her whole team are legends."

— Charlotte O'Sullivan, London Evening Standard

"What a debut it is. Harrowing, unpredictable, painful, confrontational, this is a movie for grown-ups."

— Sheila O'Malley, RogerEbert.com

"The Lost Daughter is a masterwork in perception and all that society places upon mothers and motherhood."

— Yolanda Machado, TheWrap

"The Lost Daughter leaves you haunted, shaken, and crushingly scarred like only the best of films are capable of doing."

— Tomris Laffly, The Playlist

"An original character study that spirals like a thriller, The Lost Daughter is an exhilarating, unsparing examination of modern motherhood -- its joys and discontents."

— Thelma Adams, AARP Movies for Grownups

"Ultimately what makes this an unusually rewarding picture about motherhood is the fact that it shatters the binary distinction between the good mother and the bad one."

— Wendy Ide, Screen Daily

"Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a quietly astonishing directorial debut with "The Lost Daughter," a crafty treatise on maternal ambivalence that delivers an unsettling emotional wallop."

— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

"Maggie Gyllenhaal puts forth something profound, specific, and even bone-deep about womanhood, motherhood, and all the unspoken horrors and repressed regrets that surround these identities."

— Tomris Laffly, The Playlist

"Its strong cast and the story's granular psychological texture will make it a must-see, while putting Gyllenhaal on the map as a neophyte writer-director already graced with maturity and restraint."

— David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

"Maggie Gyllenhaal's feature debut as writer-director is an impressively atmospheric piece of work - filled with longing and dread, and heavy with the anticipation of buried secrets about to be revealed."

— Mark Kermode, Observer (UK)

"We've seen good moms, bad moms, crazy moms, selfish moms, generous moms, loving moms, cold moms. But what strikes home so vividly in The Lost Daughter... is how rarely we see a mother who is all those things at once."

— Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press

"To call The Lost Daughter an assured debut is to do it a slight disservice—assurance suggests that a filmmaker knows everything going in. What we see in The Lost Daughter is something greater: the act of discovery—of the gifts actors can bring to a story, of how to hold a complex narrative together—in progress."

— Stephanie Zacharek, Time

"With The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal easily proves her talent and instinct as a director by unflinchingly infusing a great story with her own ideas and images‚ and assembling an unbeatable cast and crew (including Happy as Lazzaro and Never Rarely Sometimes Always cinematographer Hélène Louvart) to bring it home."

— Cassie da Costa, Vanity Fair

"Colman’s performance is the film’s marvel. But Gyllenhaal’s brilliant, subtle manipulations make hers one of the most auspicious directing debuts in years, a veteran, intimidating cinematic “bad girl” who turns her withering gaze on us and strings us along, wondering what became of The Lost Daughter."

— Roger Moore, Movie Nation

"Gyllenhaal’s film is a story of self-ascribed transgression and of shame buried and turned bitterly inward, and it too, is made with such alertness to the power of cinematic language – particularly that of performance – that even as you feel your stomach slowly drop at the implications of what you’re watching, you cannot break its spreading sinister spell."

— Jessica Kiang, IndieWire