‘Woman Unknown’ Director May el-Toukhy Speaks Out on Venice’s Competition Gender Gap

May el-Toukhy’s ‘Woman Unknown’ premieres in competition this weekend, and the Danish filmmaker is using the moment to talk about a gap in the industry she says goes back further than this year’s Lido lineup.

When Venice unveiled its competition lineup last month, May el-Toukhy was the only woman’s name on a list of 20 filmmakers. A late addition, the documentary Neza, co-directed by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, has since made her one of two. El-Toukhy says the math has stuck with her ever since.

“It tells us there’s still lots of work to do,” she said at the press conference for Woman Unknown, her post-World War II psychological thriller premiering in competition at the Lido. “I think it’s very, very much a structural problem that I myself have lots of experience with. I’ve been the only woman in many, many settings.”

A Gap She Traces Back Through the Whole Career Pipeline

El-Toukhy traces the imbalance back through nearly every stage of a filmmaking career, not just festival selection. “Going all the way back to when we get out of film school as female filmmakers, to getting our first film done, and getting our second film done, the budgets we work under, and even sometimes the actors that say yes and the actors that say no,” she said.

She pointed specifically to how the industry talks about male directors versus female ones. “The way the media creates stories around male directors as geniuses… I’ve never heard a female director being called a genius.”

She’s careful to note the problem doesn’t begin or end with any single festival’s programming choices. “We’re all part of this structure and it’s just been on my mind since how severe this problem is and how structural it is,” she said. “It’s as old as cinema and even older than that.”

A Film That Started as Something Else Entirely

Woman Unknown almost wasn’t about this period at all. El-Toukhy originally set out to make a film about Denmark’s 16th-century witch hunts, sparked by the country’s Protestant Reformation, which resulted in more than 1,000 executions. “I thought I was going to do a film about that,” she said, “but as I dived into the witch hunts in Denmark, I found it difficult to relate to the perpetrators, the witch hunters. I always gravitate towards telling stories where it’s more hazy, messy and sticky.”

While researching, el-Toukhy and longtime writing partner Maren Louise Käehne came across photographs of Danish women publicly punished after World War II for relationships with German soldiers, a practice that played out across Europe as so-called “horizontal collaborators” were shaved, beaten, and shamed in the streets. That discovery became the film’s actual subject.

Set in a Danish city in the summer of 1945, months after the German occupation ends, Woman Unknown follows Marie, a nanny and housemaid played by Mathilde Arcel, who is preparing to marry her wealthy, older, widowed employer, Christian, played by Carsten Bjørnlund. Her wartime relationship with a German soldier threatens to surface just as women who fraternized with occupiers are being publicly hunted down. El-Toukhy says the film’s engagement with that historical invisibility is deliberate. “My film also speaks about some of these matters, such as the invisibility of women, in a historical context.”

Woman Unknown marks el-Toukhy’s first feature in seven years, following 2015’s Long Story Short and 2019’s Queen of Hearts. In between, she directed episodes of Cry Wolf and The Crown. Mikael Rieks produced for Nordisk Film Production, in co-production with Nafta Films, Nordisk Film Production Sweden, and Film i Väst, with TrustNordisk handling international sales.

What Getting Here Cost Her

Whatever happens in competition, el-Toukhy has already made peace with what the film demanded from her. “I’ve worked 16 hours a day for more than a year. I’ve spent all my savings. I’ve used every part of me to make this film and all the resources, all the muscle power I have. I can’t really do any more, so therefore I feel okay,” she said. “And I think getting into the festival and being in competition, I’ve already won.”

Where the Market Stands

The Silver Lion for Best Director remains genuinely competitive heading into the festival’s final stretch. Martin McDonagh currently leads for Wild Horse Nine, with a real gap back to the rest of the field, while Danny Boyle and a tie between Rachel Szor and Lee Chang-dong round out the contenders currently drawing the most attention.

See where the full Venice Silver Lion for Best Director market stands right now, updated live, on Kalshi.

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Joanthan P. Moustakas

Jonathan P. Moustakas founded The Cinema Group in 2020 during the challenges of the pandemic, after losing the vital ability to find community in theaters and escape through the captivating magic of cinema. Feeling profoundly cut off from the vibrant film community he cherished, he sought to create a welcoming home for dedicated cinema fans while providing engaging, daily curated content that resonates with their passions. Years later, The Cinema Group has blossomed from a small collective of loyal fans into a thriving brand that reaches millions of audiences every month across a diverse array of platforms and mediums.

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