The Venice Film Festival had started wrapped in a strong controversy: only one woman was competing as a solo director for the Golden Lion. A strikingly low number, barely softened by the presence of a second filmmaker in a co-directed film and, moreover, a documentary. If the quantity was certainly scarce, the quality was not: Kvinde Ukendt (Woman Unknown), directed by the Dane May el-Toukhy, won the Golden Lion at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, while its lead, Mathilde Arcel, took home the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. A film in which women are the absolute protagonists, starting with the very title: Woman Unknown, “unknown woman.”
At the head of the jury that awarded both prizes was another woman, the American actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, according to rumors circulating these days on the Lido, was especially impressed by the film.
Set in Denmark in 1945, just after the end of the Nazi occupation, Woman Unknown tells the story of Marie, a young maid about to marry the wealthy widower she works for. But an uncomfortable past — her relationship with a German soldier during the war — threatens to destroy the new life she is trying to build. From this intimate story, May el-Toukhy portrays a society that, after liberation, unloads much of its desire for revenge and moral purification on women accused of having associated with the occupiers.
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