Woman Unknown wins Venice Golden Lion, Gaza documentary NAZA takes jury prize
Egyptian-Danish director May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown has won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, while the Gaza documentary NAZA received the special jury prize.
May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown has been named best film at the Venice film festival, taking home the Golden Lion. The drama follows a young housemaid in Denmark just after liberation from Nazi occupation, who fears her widowed employer will discover her wartime relationship with a German soldier. Lead actor Mathilde Arcel also won the Volpi Cup for best actress, an unusual double honour for a single film that jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said was justified by a unanimous vote for the actor. In her acceptance speech, El-Toukhy thanked Gyllenhaal for raising the issue of female directors' underrepresentation at the festival's opening, and spoke about the financial and emotional difficulty of making the film.
The runner-up grand jury prize went to South Korean director Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, about an unhappy married couple. The special jury prize, described as Venice's equivalent of a bronze medal, was awarded to Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's documentary NAZA, which examines Israel's use of AI in strikes on civilians in Gaza. Produced by the Guardian, the film draws on testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military insiders filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops, and takes its title from an intelligence-service term indicating expected civilian deaths from a strike. Accepting the award, Abraham said it was difficult to stand on stage knowing Israeli politicians and journalists were attacking the film without having seen it. The Israeli military has denied the film's allegations.
Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky won the Silver Lion for best director for DAU, a biopic of physicist Lev Landau filmed in Kharkiv before the war began; its selection drew criticism from the Ukrainian government over the lead actor's stance on the invasion and the film's funding sources. John Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for best actor for his role in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, accepting the award via video link since he was not present at the festival.
