Woman Unknown wins Venice Golden Lion; NAZA wins prize — SkimNews
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- Woman Unknown by May el-Toukhy won the Golden Lion — set in the immediate aftermath of Danish liberation from Nazi occupation, it follows a housemaid (Mathilde Arcel) whose impending marriage to her widowed employer risks exposing her wartime secret: an intimate relationship with a German soldier.
- Mathilde Arcel took the Volpi Cup for best actress for Woman Unknown, an unusual double for a single Venice film; jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said the vote was unanimous.
- El-Toukhy dedicated her acceptance speech to "the unknown women of our common history" and noted Woman Unknown was the only competition film solely directed by a woman, thanking Gyllenhaal for raising the underrepresentation of female filmmakers at the festival's start.
- NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, won the special jury prize; the documentary on Israel's AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza is built on anonymous testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders, and the Israeli military "categorically denied" the allegations the day after the film's premiere.
- DAU, Ilya Khrzhanovsky's biopic of Nobel-winning Soviet physicist Lev Landau, won the Silver Lion for best director; Venice's inclusion drew Ukrainian government criticism over lead actor Teodor Currentzis's refusal to condemn the full-scale invasion and funding from a Russian businessman later sanctioned by the US and Ukraine.
- John Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for best actor for Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, accepting via video link from the 72-year-old US actor, who was not present in Venice.
Why it matters: Venice's jury prize gave international festival validation to NAZA's accusations of AI-driven civilian targeting in Gaza — based on testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military insiders — even as the Israeli military formally rejected the claims. The Golden Lion simultaneously spotlighted the gender gap: el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown was the only competition film directed solely by a woman.
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