Shot in secret in Wales during lockdown, The Eternal Daughter re-teams Oscar-Winner Swinton with director Joanna Hogg following their collaboration on 2019’s much-lauded The Souvenir. This is in addition to the upcoming The Souvenir Part 2, which will debut later this year, and which Element Pictures are also producing.
Little is known about the mystery-drama, currently in post-production, which was shot in secret during lockdown. The film will chart the story of a middle-aged daughter and her elderly mother who must confront long-buried secrets when they return to their former family home, a once-grand manor that has become a nearly vacant hotel brimming with mystery. Alongside Swinton the cast is believed to include Joseph Mydell, Carly Davies and Alfie Sankey-Green.
The film is produced by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe and Emma Norton for Ireland’s Element Pictures alongside Hogg’s own JWH Films, with development and production backing from BBC Films. As with The Souvenir, Martin Scorsese serves as executive producer.
The Souvenir won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at and Sight & Sound named it the best film of 2019 after polling an international group of 100 film critics from around the world. A24 handled U.S. distribution on festival favourite The Souvenir and is aboard for follow-up The Souvenir Part 2. The films follow a young film student in the early '80s who becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man, and is based on Hogg’s own experiences.
Speaking to the Irish Times in August 2019 Hogg had suggested that Element and her relationship might involve more than just The Souvenir Part 2 saying about Element’s Ed Guiney: “Yes, Ed and I were planning other things together,” she says. “Part One was made through my own production company. But Part Two was always bigger. It always had more moving parts. So that seemed the time to work with Element.”
Element’s partnership with Hogg on The Souvenir Part 2 and The Eternal Daughter adds to a strong line-up of upcoming work including Martha Marcy May Marlene, director Sean Durkin’s The Nest, starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, which is scheduled for a 2021 release, and the adaptation of Normal People author Sally Rooney’s debut novel Conversations with Friends, which is currently in pre-production expected to shoot this year.