‘Woman Unknown’ takes top prize at Venice Film Festival

[VENICE] Woman Unknown, a Danish film directed by May el-Toukhy, won the Golden Lion for best film at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Saturday (Sep 12).

The film, a period drama set in Denmark, follows a servant about to marry her factory-owner employer in the uneasy years after World War II. It was awarded the festival’s top prize by a competition jury led by director and actress Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Woman Unknown, as had been widely noted, was one of only two films in the competition directed by a woman.

“The film tells the tale of women who are invisible, unseen and voiceless,” el-Toukhy said in her acceptance speech. She dedicated the award to her teenage daughter, and made a plea to “use your voice to speak up against dehumanisation”.

Danish actress Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress for her role as the servant in Woman Unknown, who faces abuse for her actions during the war.

The Volpi Cup for best actor went to John Malkovich for his work as a dying CIA agent in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine.

NAZA, a documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor about the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces, won the festival’s Special Jury Prize.

The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s runner-up award, went to Possible Love, a film by South Korean director Lee Chang-dong that tells the story of a former factory worker and his wife, and their relationship with a documentarian and her wealthy husband.

The Silver Lion for best director was awarded to Ilya Khrzhanovsky for DAU, which traces the life of a physicist across several decades in the Soviet Union.

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The Marcello Mastroianni Award for outstanding emerging actor was given to Malou Khebizi for the French drama A Place to Heal.

The best screenplay prize was awarded to Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amedeo and Olivier Gorce for another French film, A Good Little Soldier, which Brizé directed.

The Lion of the Future prize, presented to the best debut feature, went to Bernard Auguste Kouemo Yanghu’s House of the Wind, from Cameroon. NYTIMES