Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera has come under criticism from several Italian film organisations, including Women in Film Television and Media Italia, after this year's competition line-up featured only one female-directed film out of 20 titles. In an open letter published in La Repubblica, the groups argued that such a heavily skewed selection cannot simply be attributed to women directors "not being good enough", and called for the criteria used to judge cinematic quality to be re-examined, describing this year's Italian selection as "one-dimensional" and "entirely male".

The sole woman-directed film in competition for the Golden Lion is "Woman Unknown" by Danish-Egyptian director May El-Toukhy, a sharp fall from last year's roughly 29% (six of 21 films) directed by women. The signatories also include directors' associations ANAC and 100autori, guild Air3, the European Women's Audiovisual network and documentary body Doc/it, and they noted that seven male directors represent Italian cinema across the festival's main strands with no female counterpart. By contrast, the Venice Horizons sidebar, which spotlights emerging talent, features eight female directors among its 19 films.