May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion at the 83rd Venice Film Festival in Italy on September 12, while its star Mathilde Arcel took best actress. Le Monde reported the double success on September 13; Reuters and AP also confirmed the awards. Maggie Gyllenhaal chaired the jury.
The festival’s synopsis places the drama in Denmark after the Second World War. Marie, a nanny and housemaid, plans to marry her wealthy, older employer, a widower named Christian. Her wartime relationship with a German soldier threatens that future and the social position she hopes to secure.
La Biennale lists the film as a 124-minute Danish-language production from Denmark, Sweden and Latvia. El-Toukhy shares the screenplay credit with Maren Louise Käehne. In her festival statement, the director explains that the story examines punishment and public humiliation of women who had relationships with occupying soldiers.
AP identifies el-Toukhy as the eighth woman to win the Golden Lion and the only woman directing a main-competition entry alone this year. Le Monde notes that only two of the 21 competing films had a woman director or co-director. The victory is the fourth for a woman director in seven years, according to the newspaper.
Reuters lists Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love as the Grand Jury Prize winner and Ilya Khrzhanovsky as best director for DAU. John Malkovich won best actor for Wild Horse Nine. The Special Jury Award went to NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, completing a prize list spanning fiction and documentary.
El-Toukhy’s festival statement links the film’s historical setting to continuing questions about control of women’s bodies and desires. For the film’s international circulation, La Biennale names TrustNordisk as its world sales company and Lucky Red as its Italian distributor. Those listings identify its sales and distribution partners without specifying a wider release timetable.
Comments