May el-Toukhy's 'Woman Unknown' Premieres at Venice, Confronting Wartime Silence and a Festival's Gender Gap
Danish director May el-Toukhy's "Woman Unknown" premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2026, screening in the Venezia 83 Competition section — the festival's main competition, where the Golden Lion is awarded (La Biennale di Venezia). It was the only film in that competition solely helmed by a woman (Variety).
The 124-minute Danish-language film, titled "Kvinde Ukendt" in Danish, is set in Denmark in the weeks leading up to liberation in 1945. It follows Marie, a young housemaid and nanny about to marry Christian, the wealthy older widower she works for (La Biennale di Venezia). The film takes its dramatic turn around a chapter of history that el-Toukhy said she wanted to examine: women accused of having relationships with German soldiers during the Second World War — the so-called "horizontal collaborators" (Variety).
The title, "Woman Unknown," is a reference to the silence surrounding women's wartime suffering. El-Toukhy cited the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich's book "The Unwomanly Face of War" as an inspiration. She said she had initially wanted to make a film about the witch hunts that followed the Reformation in the 1500s before turning to this subject (Variety).
A co-production of Denmark, Sweden and Latvia, the film was produced by Nordisk Film Production's Mikael Rieks and SIA Nafta Films' Esko Rips. Trust Nordisk is handling international sales; the North American premiere is set for the Centrepiece section of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs as one of the industry's key autumn marketplaces — festivals where sales agents and buyers determine what reaches screens months or years later. Danish theatrical release is scheduled for 4 February 2027 (Wikipedia; Trust Nordisk).
El-Toukhy used her Venice platform to address the festival's gender representation directly. She noted that the main competition initially included only one female director, and that the festival later added the documentary "Naza," co-directed by Rachel Szor. She called the lack of female directors in the main competition a structural problem and said she has never heard a female director called a "genius" while reading many articles about male geniuses (Variety).
El-Toukhy is also part of the new Dogma 25 movement, whose manifesto was announced by Variety in 2025. The movement evokes the original Dogme 95 manifesto launched by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg — a set of strict production rules meant to strip filmmaking back to its essentials (Variety).
What gives "Woman Unknown" its weight at Venice is that it arrives as both a competition entry and a pointed argument. El-Toukhy's film looks backward to women erased from the wartime record while she stands as the sole woman in the field competing for the Golden Lion.
