{"id":614214,"date":"2026-09-12T22:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/614214\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T22:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:24:09","slug":"woman-unknown-wins-venice-film-festival-as-naza-takes-special-jury-prize-venice-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/614214\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman Unknown wins Venice film festival as NAZA takes special jury prize | Venice film festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

May el-Toukhy\u2019s Woman Unknown has scooped the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival<\/a>, at an awards ceremony that also saw the Gaza documentary NAZA win the jury prize.<\/p>\n

Set in the immediate aftermath of Danish liberation from Nazi occupation, the Egyptian-Danish director\u2019s film tells the story of a young housemaid, Marie (Mathilde Arcel), who is about to marry her widowed employer but anxious about him discovering a shameful secret in her past: during the war, Marie had an intimate relationship with a German soldier.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s film critic hailed Woman Unknown as \u201celegantly appointed\u201d in his review<\/a>, likening it to Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Rebecca.<\/p>\n

Arcel also won the festival\u2019s best actress prize, the Volpi Cup, which puzzled some critics: usually, Venice<\/a> doesn\u2019t award more than one prize to a film. Speaking to the press after the ceremony, the jury president, Maggie Gyllenhaal, said they were able to make an exception because the jury\u2019s vote for the Danish actor was unanimous. \u201cShe is going to blow our socks off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Maggie Gyllenhaal (left), president of the 2026 Venice jury, and the festival\u2019s president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, hand the Golden Lion to
May el-Toukhy. Photograph: Yara Nardi\/Reuters<\/p>\n

In an emotional acceptance speech, El-Toukhy thanked Gyllenhaal for addressing the underrepresentation of female film-makers at the start of the festival. Woman Unknown was the only film in competition to be solely directed by a woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis film has been incredibly challenging to make financially, logistically, emotionally,\u201d El-Toukhy said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee Chang-dong (right) is presented with the grand jury prize for Possible Love by veteran Hong Kong film-maker and jury member Johnnie To. Photograph: Scott A Garfitt\/AP<\/p>\n

The runner-up grand jury prize went to the Korean director Lee Chang-dong\u2019s Possible Love<\/a>, a simmering tale of an unhappy married couple befriended by a documentary maker and her wealthy husband, which drew rave reviews.<\/p>\n

The special jury prize, Venice\u2019s equivalent of a bronze medal, went to Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor\u2019s documentary NAZA<\/a>, about Israel\u2019s AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The film, which was produced by the Guardian, is based on testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders who are interviewed anonymously<\/a> at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv. It takes its title from an acronym used by the intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza.<\/p>\n

NAZA directors Rachel Szor, left, and Yuval Abraham with the special jury award. Photograph: Yara Nardi\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Abraham said when accepting his prize. \u201cSo much is being done not to look at reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after NAZA\u2019s premiere, the Israeli military \u201ccategorically denied\u201d the allegations made in the film.<\/p>\n

The Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky won the Silver Lion for best director for the visually stunning DAU<\/a>, a biopic of the Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist Lev Landau, who was pressured into working on the Soviet Union\u2019s nuclear weapons programme.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of Khrzhanovsky\u2019s film in the Venice lineup was criticised by the Ukrainian government<\/a> in the run-up to the festival, over its lead actor Teodor Currentzis\u2019s refusal to condemn the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and for having received funding from a Russian businessman who was later sanctioned by the US and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Ilya Khrzhanovsky with his Silver Lion best director award for DAU. Photograph: Yves Herman\/Reuters<\/p>\n

DAU was filmed in Kharkiv between 2008 and 2011, before the start of the conflict. At a press conference on the Lido, Khrzhanovsky said: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Malkovich took home the Volpi Cup for best actor, for his role as an erratic veteran CIA agent whose cancer diagnosis leads him to question the morality of his profession, in Martin McDonagh\u2019s Wild Horse Nine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The 72-year-old US actor was not present in Venice and accepted his award via a video link. \u201cI 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,\u201d Malkovich said.<\/p>\n

Full list of winners<\/p>\n

Golden Lion for best film: Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy<\/p>\n

Grand jury prize: Possible Love, directed by Lee Chang-dong<\/p>\n

Silver Lion for best director: Ilya Khrzhanovsky for DAU<\/p>\n

Special jury prize: NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor<\/p>\n

Best screenplay: Un bon petit soldat (A Good Little Soldier), St\u00e9phane Briz\u00e9, Coralie Am\u00e9d\u00e9o, Olivier Gorce<\/p>\n

Volpi Cup for best actress: Mathilde Arcel in Woman Unknown<\/p>\n

Volpi Cup for best actor: John Malkovich<\/a> in Wild Horse Nine<\/p>\n

Marcello Mastroianni award for best young actor: Malou Khebizi in 15\/18 A Place to Heal<\/a><\/p>\n

Armani Beauty audience award: Eu contez (I Matter), directed by Alina \u0218erban<\/p>\n

Luigi De Laurentiis award for debut film: La maison du vent (House of the Wind), directed by Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May el-Toukhy\u2019s Woman Unknown has scooped the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, at an awards ceremony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-614214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}