The Egyptian-Danish director May el-Toukhy's film Woman Unknown has won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, making her the eighth female director to take the top prize, while the special jury prize went to NAZA, a Guardian-produced documentary examining Israel's AI-assisted killing of civilians in Gaza. The awards drew attention both for their subject matter and for some unusual jury decisions, with the ceremony spotlighting under-representation of women directors as well as a contentious documentary that the Israeli military has denied.

Woman Unknown, set just after Danish liberation from Nazi occupation, follows a housemaid hiding a wartime relationship with a German soldier; its star Mathilde Arcel also won the best actress Volpi Cup, an unusual double that jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said reflected a unanimous vote. The runner-up grand jury prize went to Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, while NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and based on testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military insiders, took the special jury prize despite the Israeli military's denial of its allegations. Other honours included the Silver Lion for Ilya Khrzhanovsky's Soviet-era biopic DAU, which had drawn criticism from Ukraine over its lead actor's stance on the war, and the best actor Volpi Cup for John Malkovich in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse.