Woman Unknown

May el-Toukhy made waves in 2019 with her sophomore feature Queen of Hearts, an ethically probing film that even the striking Catherine Breillat tried to remake but quite couldn’t recreate. Now the Danish-Egyptian director returns with a historical drama about post-liberation Denmark’s ruthless witch hunt against suspected Nazi collaborators.

Marie (Mathilde Arcel) worked as part of Christian’s (Carsten Bjørnlund) housekeeping staff before the widower chose her to become the new woman by his side. With preparations for their wedding underway, Marie’s appointment to have her gown altered is disturbed by the unexpected resurfacing of a figure from her past. Her marriage to the patriarch, which promised the young woman a path to a new life, is suddenly in jeopardy.

There is a bitter irony in Woman Unknown being the only female-directed film in competition at the 83^rd edition of Venice Film Festival and one of its most forgettable entries. An unsettling and tightly controlled drama about the women whose experiences were largely erased from historical records, the picture itself struggles to leave a distinct cinematic imprint.

What is remarkable is el-Toukhy’s commitment to exposing the rampant misogyny inherent in the practice of shaming women for sexual relationships with German soldiers. No matter how much agency they may have had in these encounters, the feature recognises submission as a means of survival. Yet the protagonist’s position remains deliberately ambiguous. Rather, the film eschews simplistic moral categorisations and judgments, presenting Marie’s instinct for self-preservation for the audience to witness and comprehend.

Mathilde Arcel balances the film’s overarching restraint with a calibrated vulnerability simmering beneath Marie’s externalised guardedness. There is a psychological complexity to her that the script’s conventional plotting occasionally lacks.

Perhaps it is unfair to fault Woman Unknown for entering the well-trodden terrain of postwar cinema, as it is an accomplished recount of overlooked forms of violence and persecution. Yet despite el-Toukhy’s assured hand, the feature’s considerable strengths never quite coalesce into a whole that lingers in the memory for an extended period.

Selina Sondermann

Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event, visit the Venice Film Festival website here.