Danish director May el-Toukhy is competing at the Venice Film Festival with her psychological thriller Woman Unknown, but is one of only two women in the running for this year's Golden Lion. She told Deadline the near-total absence of female directors highlights a persistent structural problem in the film industry, from film-school opportunities and budgets through to how the media portrays male directors as "geniuses" while rarely affording women the same status.

Set in Denmark in the summer of 1945, Woman Unknown follows housemaid Marie, whose impending marriage to her wealthy employer is threatened by a secret from the war, as women who fraternised with German soldiers face public shaming. El-Toukhy, whose main-competition line-up initially included just one woman among 19 men before Rachel Szor's late addition, developed the film with writing partner Maren Louise Käehne after abandoning an earlier project on Denmark's Reformation-era witch hunts; it draws on academic research estimating that at least 50,000 Danish women had relationships with German soldiers during the occupation, though only a small number were actual collaborators.