Woman Unknown wins Venice Golden Lion — SkimNews
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- May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion for a film set in post-liberation Denmark about a housemaid hiding a wartime relationship with a German soldier; the Guardian compared it to Hitchcock's Rebecca.
- NAZA, a Guardian-produced documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor about Israel's AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza, won the special jury prize — the Israeli military "categorically denied" the allegations the day after the film's premiere, and Abraham said Israeli politicians and journalists were "attacking this film and denying it without even seeing it."
- Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress for Woman Unknown, a rare dual prize for a single film; jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said the vote was unanimous and called Arcel's performance "a laser beam."
- Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love took the grand jury prize, and Ilya Khrzhanovsky won the Silver Lion for best director for DAU — a biopic of physicist Lev Landau filmed in Kharkiv between 2008 and 2011, whose inclusion was criticized by Ukraine over lead actor Teodor Currentzis's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion.
- John Malkovich, 72, won best actor via video link for his role as an erratic veteran CIA agent in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, calling the award "humbling" given the festival's 83-year history.
Why it matters: Venice rarely gives multiple prizes to a single film, so Woman Unknown sweeping both the Golden Lion and best actress — the only competition title directed solely by a woman — is an unusual institutional signal about the year's standout work. The NAZA win lands harder politically: a major festival has just amplified testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli insiders about AI-targeted strikes in Gaza, on the same day the Israeli military formally rejected those claims, sharpening an international debate the film was made to provoke.
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