Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy has won the Golden Lion, the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival, for Woman Unknown.
The drama about a woman concealing her past in Denmark after the Second World War also earned Mathilde Arcel the Volpi Cup for Best Actress during Saturday’s closing ceremony.
The awards were decided by a jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Other members of the panel included Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania and Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat.
Accepting the prize, el-Toukhy said, “What kept me going was the urgent need to illuminate the unknown women of our common history, to make them known.”
Arcel plays Marie, a housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy employer while hiding a wartime relationship with a German soldier. The Danish, Swedish and Latvian production follows her attempts to protect her future at a time when women accused of relationships with occupying soldiers face public punishment.
Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and an Egyptian father, el-Toukhy previously directed Long Story Short and Queen of Hearts. The latter won the Audience Award in the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Dramatic Competition in 2019. She was among several Arab filmmakers in the running at this year’s Venice festival.
Her victory followed scrutiny of the limited number of women directors in the main competition. Woman Unknown was the only entry solely directed by a woman. Israeli filmmaker Rachel Szor co-directed the late addition Naza with Yuval Abraham.
At her film’s news conference earlier during the festival, el-Toukhy addressed the imbalance.
“I think it’s very, very much a structural problem that I myself have lots of experience with,” she said.
She described obstacles extending from getting a first film made, to the budgets and opportunities available later in a director’s career.
Lebanese-Moroccan filmmaker Shaden Safieddine Tazi won the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film for A Few Moments of Happiness. The documentary follows a Lebanese filmmaker in Paris watching the conflict in Lebanon through her phone, combining screen recordings and family voices to convey the experience of witnessing events from abroad.
In the main competition, Naza received the special jury prize. The documentary, which premiered to a lengthy standing ovation, examines Israeli military operations in Gaza through testimony from military and intelligence sources.
South Korean director Lee Chang-dong won the Silver Lion grand jury prize for Possible Love, while Ilya Khrzhanovsky received the directing award for Dau. John Malkovich won best actor for Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, and A Good Little Soldier won best screenplay for Stephane Brize, Coralie Amedeo and Olivier Gorce.
