In April 2010, Cathy Terkanian received a letter that would change her life forever. It was written by a social worker, who explained that the daughter Terkanian had given up for adoption 35 years prior had disappeared from her adoptive home in 1989. Driven by a need for answers, Terkanian enlisted the help of an amateur sleuth and local authorities and embarked on a 10-year quest to uncover what  happened to her child. 

Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter chronicles that quest, diving into the shadowy depths of a chilling true-crime story that feels almost impossible to believe. At the center of this labyrinthine tale, however, is the unbreakable bond between mother and child — and the power of maternal instinct across space and time. 

Directed and produced by Ryan White (Pamela, a love story, The Keepers), Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is also produced by Jessica Hargrave, Matt Maher, and Charlize Theron. According to White, it was Theron who incepted the project after reading Nile Cappello’s masterful, unflinching reporting on the story in The Atavist and reaching out to White’s team.  

“I remember in that conversation how incredibly passionate Charlize was,” White tells Tudum. “She didn’t feel like a superstar when you were talking to her — she felt like an adoptive mother who felt passionately that this was the worst case scenario of what could happen with adoption.”

Theron says it was Terkanian’s doggedness that really inspired her to tell her story. 

“Cathy was resilient and followed her intuition all the way to the end to get answers about her daughter,” Theron tells Tudum. “I think that sort of tenacity in the face of a bunch of people telling you you’re wrong is something that really resonates with audiences. We so often are taught to trust our gut, but rarely see it in action.”

White and his team first traveled to Michigan to meet Terkanian in 2022, quickly realizing that at the center of their story was a remarkable, unrelenting mother whose instinct to protect the daughter she’d given up decades ago hadn’t faded away. 

“Cathy is just a remarkable woman in her strength, and then her conviction,” Hargrave tells Tudum. “Without her, none of this would have happened. Despite having only met her daughter as a baby, Cathy still felt this connection to her, and felt compelled to the point of borderline obsession to find out what happened to her.”

In addition, Maher tells Tudum, “We want people to see people like Cathy and realize that when you take action and fight for what you believe is right, the truth can and will come out, and more often than not there’s people that will want to help bring that truth to light.”

Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is executive produced by Cappello, A.J. Dix, and Beth Kono. Here more from director Ryan White and producer Jessica Hargrave on the latest episode of You Can’t Make This Up below.