Woman Unknown takes the Golden Lion, and NAZA wins the jury prize
May el-Toukhy becomes the eighth female director to win Venice’s top award. Mathilde Arcel took the Volpi Cup for the same film, which the jury president said was possible because the vote was unanimous.
May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown has won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, at a ceremony that also saw the Gaza documentary NAZA take the jury prize.
El-Toukhy becomes the eighth female director to win the festival's top award.
The film
Set in the immediate aftermath of Danish liberation from Nazi occupation, the Egyptian-Danish director's film follows a young housemaid, Marie, played by Mathilde Arcel.
Marie is about to marry her widowed employer, and anxious about him discovering a secret from her past: during the war she had an intimate relationship with a German soldier.
The Guardian's film critic called the film "elegantly appointed", likening it to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.
Two prizes for one film
Arcel also won the Volpi Cup for best actress, which puzzled some critics — Venice does not usually award more than one prize to the same film.
Jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal explained the exception after the ceremony. The jury was able to make it, she said, because the vote for the Danish actor was unanimous.
"She is going to blow our socks off," Gyllenhaal said.
That is the reason Gyllenhaal gave for the exception.
NAZA
The Gaza documentary NAZA took the special jury prize.
The film, produced by the Guardian, is described by the paper as an exposé of Israeli killings in Gaza.
The jury prize places that reception on the official record. It is not the Golden Lion, but it is the award that recognises a film the jury considered significant on grounds other than the top prize.
The rest of the field
Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love was also among the films awarded.
The jury
Gyllenhaal presided over the 2026 jury alongside the festival's president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco.
Asked about Woman Unknown, Gyllenhaal addressed the suggestion that the jury had favoured it because it was directed by a woman — a question the Guardian reports she answered directly.
What the result means for the film
A Golden Lion and a Volpi Cup from the same festival is the strongest launch a film can take into the awards season that follows Venice.
For an Egyptian-Danish co-production in Danish, about the aftermath of occupation, that combination is what determines whether it reaches audiences beyond the festival circuit.
The count
El-Toukhy is the eighth female director to have won the Golden Lion.
