May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown has claimed the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, leading an awards ceremony that also recognized the controversial Gaza documentary NAZA and Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love.
Set in the immediate aftermath of Denmark's liberation from Nazi occupation, the Egyptian-Danish director’s film follows Marie, a young housemaid played by Mathilde Arcel, who is preparing to marry her widowed employer. Marie is consumed by anxiety that he will discover her wartime secret: an intimate relationship with a German soldier. Critics praised the film's elegant execution, comparing its atmosphere to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rebecca.
Arcel's performance earned her the festival's best actress prize, the Volpi Cup. Although Venice rarely awards multiple major prizes to a single film, jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal explained that the decision was unanimous, stating of Arcel, "She is going to blow our socks off."
El-Toukhy, who became the eighth female director to win the Golden Lion, used her acceptance speech to thank Gyllenhaal for addressing the underrepresentation of female filmmakers. Woman Unknown was the only film in competition solely directed by a woman. "This film has been incredibly challenging to make financially, logistically, emotionally," El-Toukhy said. "And what kept me going was the urgent need to illuminate the unknown women of our common history, to make them known. And especially tonight, I feel like I succeeded in doing just that."
The runner-up Grand Jury Prize went to South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, which follows an unhappy married couple who are befriended by a documentary filmmaker and her wealthy husband.
The Special Jury Prize was awarded to NAZA, a documentary directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor that examines Israel's AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza. The film draws on testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders interviewed anonymously at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv. Its title is derived from an acronym used by intelligence services to indicate the expected number of civilian deaths in an airstrike.
Accepting the prize, Abraham addressed the backlash the film has received. "It’s honestly not very easy to stand here, thinking of all the Israeli politicians and journalists who are now attacking this film and denying it without even seeing it," Abraham said. "So much is being done not to look at reality." The day after the film's premiere, the Israeli military categorically denied its allegations.
Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky won the Silver Lion for best director for DAU, a biopic of Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Lev Landau, who was pressured into working on the Soviet nuclear weapons program. The film's inclusion had drawn criticism from the Ukrainian government due to lead actor Teodor Currentzis's refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and the project's funding from a subsequently sanctioned Russian businessman. DAU was filmed in Kharkiv between 2008 and 2011. At a press conference, Khrzhanovsky said, "The only thing I can wish for is peace and success for the Ukrainian government to succeed in the best possible way, to save the country and to win this war."
John Malkovich took home the Volpi Cup for best actor for his role in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, playing an erratic veteran CIA agent diagnosed with cancer who begins questioning his profession's morality. The 72-year-old actor accepted the award via video link. "I am humbled to be chosen for this award, which has been given to so many wonderful actors over the past 83 iterations of the Venice film festival," Malkovich said.
Other awards presented at the festival included best screenplay for Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amédéo, and Olivier Gorce for Un bon petit soldat (A Good Little Soldier). Malou Khebizi won the Marcello Mastroianni award for best young actor in 15/18 A Place to Heal. Alina Șerban’s Eu contez (I Matter) won the Armani Beauty audience award, while Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu received the Luigi De Laurentiis award for debut film for La maison du vent (House of the Wind).
