A Danish-Egyptian filmmaker, a story about women history forgot, and Venice’s biggest prize. May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown has taken home the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, with its leading actress Mathilde Arcel also winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It is only the eighth time in Venice’s history that the Golden Lion has gone to a woman director.
And somehow, the win feels particularly fitting for a film whose entire premise is about women being overlooked.
A Golden Lion for an “invisible” story
Set in Denmark just after the end of the Second World War, Woman Unknown follows Marie, a young housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy widowed employer. There is just one problem: she is carrying a secret from the war — an intimate relationship with a German soldier.
In the Denmark of the film, that secret can cost Marie everything.
The story draws from the real experiences of Danish women who were publicly humiliated, attacked and ostracised after being accused of relationships with German soldiers during the occupation. el-Toukhy became fascinated by how women, in particular, became easy targets during the post-war reckoning.
As she put it, “the women were an easy target.”
That idea became the emotional centre of Woman Unknown: not simply what happened to these women, but why society was so willing to punish them — and why their stories largely disappeared from the historical record.
el-Toukhy has described the film as being about “the female body as a battlefield”, while also exploring the invisibility of women throughout history.
And that invisibility is now being challenged on one of cinema’s biggest stages.
The woman behind the only woman-directed film
There was another reason el-Toukhy’s presence in Venice mattered.
When the festival announced its Competition lineup, Woman Unknown was the only film solely directed by a woman among the original 20 selections. A later addition brought the number of women directors/co-directors up to two, but the imbalance remained glaring.
el-Toukhy did not shy away from talking about it.
At the festival, she spoke openly about the structural barriers women face, from securing funding for a first film to getting bigger budgets and opportunities later in their careers.
“There’s a systemic problem: It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” Venice jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said during the festival.
el-Toukhy knows that problem personally. Before the winners were announced, she said Woman Unknown repeatedly sat near the bottom of prediction lists — sometimes ranked 39th or 40th out of around 40 films.
Her response after winning was wonderfully blunt.
“It doesn’t surprise me that some people would say, ‘Oh, did she get it?’ Because that’s part of everyday life as a woman in this industry.”
So, yes, the Golden Lion is a huge career moment. But there is something deliciously satisfying about the fact that a filmmaker who was being counted out ended up taking the biggest prize of the night.
And then there’s the film itself
Woman Unknown could easily have become another familiar Second World War drama. el-Toukhy wanted the opposite.
She has spoken about how people initially glazed over when she pitched the project, hearing “another Second World War film.” Her response was essentially: we have told plenty of stories about men during and after war — what happens when we look at the women who were left behind?
The film is built as a psychological thriller, unfolding over just five days. That compressed timeline gives Marie’s story a feeling of constant pressure, with suspense, secrecy and the threat of exposure hanging over her.
Visually, el-Toukhy also resisted the expected wartime palette. Rather than making a traditional period film, she created an almost desaturated world dominated by black, white and red.
Red appears in Marie’s clothing, the Danish flag and the Nazi imagery — becoming a visual thread connecting nationalism, shame and the complicated aftermath of occupation.
El-Toukhy reportedly spent more than a year working 16-hour days on Woman Unknown, putting her savings and every available resource into making the film.
It is history, but with a thriller pulse.
And Venice clearly responded. The film’s competition screening earned a 7½-minute standing ovation, before going on to win the festival’s top prize.
Meet May El-Toukhy
Born and raised in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and Egyptian father, el-Toukhy has always occupied more than one cultural space.
That perspective has shaped the kinds of stories she gravitates towards. She has spoken about growing up without seeing much non-white representation in Scandinavian fiction, describing the feeling as one of invisibility.
As she got older, she noticed another kind of absence: women were often reduced to familiar roles — the good wife, the caring mother, the woman balancing work and home.
She wanted something messier.
“We have to dare to expose both women that do good and women that do bad,” she has said, arguing that complicated women make for more relevant stories.
It is a philosophy that runs through her work — and Woman Unknown might be its most literal expression yet.
Before the Golden Lion: Long Story Short and Queen of Hearts
Woman Unknown is only el-Toukhy’s third feature film.
She made her feature debut with the 2015 romantic comedy Long Story Short, before turning toward much darker territory with Queen of Hearts in 2019.
The latter put her firmly on the international map.
Starring Trine Dyrholm, Queen of Hearts is deliberately interested in the kind of female character cinema does not always know what to do with.
The film won the Audience Award in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, as well as major Nordic prizes, including the Nordic Council Film Prize.
Between her features, el-Toukhy has also worked extensively in television, directing episodes of acclaimed productions including Cry Wolf and The Crown.
So while Woman Unknown may look like a sudden international breakthrough, it really isn’t.
It is the latest chapter in a career that has been quietly building toward this moment.
At one point before the festival, she said she had already felt she had won simply by getting into Competition.
Then Venice went a little further.
During her emotional acceptance speech, El-Toukhy returned to the women at the heart of her film — the women whose names never made it into history books, whose stories survived mostly through shame and silence.
“What kept me going was the urgent need to illuminate the unknown women of our common history, to make them known,” she said. “Especially tonight, I feel like I succeeded in doing just that.”
And perhaps that is the most fitting ending to the story.
A film about women being ignored has just become impossible to ignore.
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