Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy, won the Golden Lion for best film at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. The event, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, ran from September 2 to September 12, 2026, on the Venice Lido, and the jury announced its main prizes at the closing ceremony on the final Saturday. The winning title is a co-production between Denmark, Sweden and Latvia, placing a Nordic-led film at the top of one of the year’s most closely watched competitions and handing it the festival’s highest honor.
The film also took the Coppa Volpi for best actress, awarded to Mathilde Arcel for her lead performance. El-Toukhy’s picture was the only competition entry directed by a woman this year. The director has spoken about the difficulty of getting the project financed and completed, describing the production as challenging on financial, logistical and emotional grounds, and framing the work around historical female figures she felt had been overlooked.
Other prizes went to a broad international field. The Grand Jury Prize, or Silver Lion, was given to Possible Love by the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong. The Silver Lion for best director went to Ilya Khrzhanovsky for DAU, a German, French and Swedish co-production. John Malkovich received the Coppa Volpi for best actor for Wild Horse Nine, and the screenplay award went to Stephane Brize, Coralie Amedeo and Olivier Gorce for A Good Little Soldier.
The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Naza, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The Marcello Mastroianni Award for a young performer went to Malou Khebizi for A Place to Heal. During the festival, George Clooney received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and the program closed with God Laughs by Giovanni Veronesi.
Venice has long served as an early marker in the international awards calendar, and films that leave the Lido with major prizes often carry that momentum into the autumn festival circuit and the season that follows. For the Nordic film industry, the result puts a regional co-production in front of a global audience of distributors, programmers and critics at a moment when Scandinavian and Baltic partners are increasingly sharing financing and talent across borders. The double recognition of the top prize and a lead acting award is likely to raise the film’s profile with international buyers as it moves toward wider release.
