Mathilde Arcel won best actress at the Venice Film Festival for “Woman Unknown,” her first lead role, and the film took the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, in a rare double. Arcel received the Volpi Cup at the closing ceremony on September 12. She said she was in tears accepting the honor, her first film award, at her first festival. Hours later, Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy collected the Golden Lion for the same film.
“Woman Unknown” is set in Denmark after the Nazi occupation ended. Arcel plays Marie, a housemaid whose wartime relationship with a German soldier threatens her plan to marry her wealthy older employer, played by Carsten Bjørnlund. El-Toukhy has described the film as a story about women’s bodies becoming a public battleground and about women history has rendered invisible. Her earlier work includes “Queen of Hearts,” which won an audience award at Sundance in 2019.
El-Toukhy was the only woman to direct a feature alone in Venice’s 21-film main competition, a disparity that drew criticism during the festival. At a press conference she called the shortage of opportunities for female directors a deeply structural problem.
The other major prizes spread widely. Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” took the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. Ilya Khrzhanovsky won best director for “DAU,” his sprawling project shot largely in Ukraine, and dedicated the award to Ukrainians fighting the war.
John Malkovich won best actor for “Wild Horse Nine,” Martin McDonagh’s comedy in which he plays an eccentric CIA agent. Malkovich, 72, accepted by video from Montreal, where he was filming. Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amédéo and Olivier Gorce won best screenplay for the French workplace drama “A Good Little Soldier,” and Malou Khebizi took the young-actor prize.
The festival opens awards season and often produces early Oscar favorites. Fewer studio-backed films than usual competed this year, as Hollywood rethinks how it markets movies and controls costs. That absence left room for smaller European and Asian productions to dominate the podium. Arcel said she looked up to the filmmakers in the room her whole life.
