Woman Unknown Wins Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival has come to a close, and a new film has earned the prestigious award of the Golden Lion. Woman Unknown, a Danish film about a nanny (Mathilde Arcel) whose World War II past is catching up to her, won several awards, including the Golden Lion, at this year’s Venice Film Festival main competition. Arcel won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress; John Malkovich won Best Actor for Wild Horse Nine. “The film tells the story of invisible women. Women who go unseen and unheard. My thanks go to my amazing cast for the passion you poured into portraying these characters,” director May El-Toukhy said during her acceptance speech, per Deadline. Other winners of the evening include the Grand Jury Prize for Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, the Special Jury Prize for Naza, a Silver Lion for Directing for Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, and Best Screenplay for A Good Little Soldier.

Woman Unknown is one of two films in the festival lineup directed by a woman, and Venice jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal points out a systemic issue in the film industry. “There’s a systemic problem: It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” she said at a press conference earlier in the festival. “Also, could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed ‘high art’? Who decides what’s good? Who decides what’s valuable?”