Venice’s Golden Lion went to May el-Toukhy, making her only the eighth woman to take the festival’s top award and putting renewed focus on gender representation in major film competitions. Her historical drama, Woman Unknown, which is set in Denmark after the country’s liberation from Nazi rule, follows Marie, a housemaid played by Mathilde Arcel, who juggles an engagement to her widowed employer while fearing exposure of a wartime intimacy with a German soldier. The film received the highest honour at the Lido and Arcel was awarded the Volpi Cup for best actress, a pairing festival organisers said reflected a unanimous jury decision.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, president of the 2026 jury, underlined the vote for Arcel was unanimous, saying, "She is going to blow our socks off." El-Toukhy used her acceptance to single out Gyllenhaal for comments she had made earlier in the festival about the underrepresentation of women. "This film has been incredibly challenging to make financially, logistically, emotionally," el-Toukhy said. "And what kept me going was the urgent need to illuminate the unknown women of our common history, to make them known. And especially tonight, I feel like I succeeded in doing just that."
The grand jury prize went to Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, a drama about a troubled marriage that attracted strong reviews. The special jury prize was awarded to NAZA, a documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor produced by the Guardian, which presents allegations of an AI-assisted approach to civilian casualties in Gaza. The film is built around testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military insiders, often filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops, and its title refers to an acronym used to estimate expected civilian deaths in airstrikes.
Accepting the special jury prize, Yuval Abraham criticised immediate public attacks on the film, saying, "It’s honestly not very easy to stand here, thinking of all the Israeli politicians and journalists who are now attacking this film and denying it without even seeing it. So much is being done not to look at reality." The day after NAZA premiered, the Israeli military issued a public, categorical denial of the allegations the documentary raises.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky won the Silver Lion for best director for DAU, a biopic of the physicist Lev Landau shot in Kharkiv between 2008 and 2011. His selection had drawn criticism from the Ukrainian government over the lead actor’s refusal to condemn the full-scale invasion and for funding links to a businessman later sanctioned by the US and Ukraine. At the festival Khrzhanovsky offered a brief wish for Ukraine, saying, "The only thing I can wish for is peace and success for the Ukrainian government to succeed in the best possible way, to save the country and to win this war."
John Malkovich received the Volpi Cup for best actor for his role in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, accepting via video with the remark, "I am humbled to be chosen for this award, which has been given to so many wonderful actors over the past 83 iterations of the Venice film festival." The full winners list also named Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amédéo and Olivier Gorce for best screenplay for Un bon petit soldat.
The awards night underscored Venice’s willingness to give prominence to work that provokes conversation, from a woman director reworking historical drama to a contentious documentary that has already drawn official rebuttal, while still recognising established international auteurs.
