May el-Toukhy, a Danish-Egyptian director whose film Woman Unknown is competing for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, has raised concerns about systemic gender disparities in the film industry. Speaking at a press conference, el-Toukhy noted that female directors are rarely characterized as geniuses in media coverage, contrasting sharply with how male counterparts are typically promoted. She emphasized that this pattern reflects a broader structural problem rather than individual instances of discrimination.
El-Toukhy recounted her personal experience navigating the industry, describing a six or seven-year struggle to complete her debut feature after film school while observing that male peers progressed more rapidly. She acknowledged that awareness of gender imbalance increased following recent industry reckoning, but suggested that progress has stalled or reversed in recent years. At the Venice festival’s 83rd edition, Woman Unknown was initially the sole film directed by a woman in the main competition before the festival added the documentary NAZA, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
Competition honors at Europe’s leading festivals—Venice, Cannes, and Berlin—carry significant weight for international distribution prospects. The Venice lineup includes established directors such as Werner Herzog, Paul Schrader, Nanni Moretti, Martin McDonagh, and Danny Boyle. By comparison, other major European festivals have demonstrated higher female representation: Cannes this year included five women directors among 22 main competition films, while the Berlinale featured seven women among 17 selections.
El-Toukhy’s third feature, Woman Unknown, is set immediately following Denmark’s liberation from Nazi occupation and centers on a young housemaid navigating societal expectations while harboring a wartime secret. The director developed the project through research into historical persecution of women accused of collaboration, exploring themes of female invisibility and objectification during wartime. El-Toukhy previously directed Queen of Hearts, which received the Nordic Council Film Prize in 2019, and initiated Dogma 25, a contemporary reimagining of the minimalist filmmaking movement that produced directors including Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.
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