# May el-Toukhy Takes ‘Woman Unknown’ to Venice: “I’ve Used Every Part of Me to Make This Film”

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/may-el-toukhy-takes-woman-unknown-to-venice-ive-used-every-part-of-me-to-make-this-film/
- Published: 2026-09-06T15:37:15+00:00
- Updated: 2026-09-06T21:43:42+00:00
- Original publisher: The Hollywood Reporter
- Original article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/may-el-toukhy-woman-unknown-venice-film-festival-mathilde-1236683019/
- Topics: Art, Business, Culture, Entertainment, Film, Markets

## Key points

- May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown competes for Venice's Golden Lion.
- Film centres on a Danish woman's affair with a German soldier post-WWII.
- Director says she spent all her savings and worked 16-hour days.

## Summary

Danish director May el-Toukhy is presenting her third feature, Woman Unknown, in competition for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, making her one of only two women vying for the top prize this year. Set in a Danish city in the months after the Second World War, the film follows Marie, a nanny about to marry her wealthy widowed employer, whose wartime relationship with a German soldier threatens to expose her to public shame and punishment. El-Toukhy describes the project as a deliberate corrective to decades of war cinema told from men's perspectives, and says the demanding shoot took a heavy personal and financial toll.

The idea grew out of an abandoned project on Reformation-era witch hunts, which el-Toukhy dropped after losing interest in the perpetrators; she and co-writer Maren Louise Käehne were instead struck by a republished 1943 propaganda photograph of a woman with a swastika painted on her back, which redirected them towards the plight of women who had relationships with occupying soldiers. A Denmark-Sweden-Latvia co-production made on a tight budget, the film stars Mathilde Arcel as Marie and Carsten Bjørnlund as her fiancé, and follows el-Toukhy's earlier features Long Story Short (2015) and Queen of Hearts (2019). She told The Hollywood Reporter she worked 16-hour days for over a year and spent all her savings making the film, adding that she already feels she has "won" simply by completing it before arriving on the Lido.

## Coverage

- [The Hollywood Reporter: May el-Toukhy Takes ‘Woman Unknown’ to Venice: “I’ve Used Every Part of Me to Make This Film”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/may-el-toukhy-woman-unknown-venice-film-festival-mathilde-1236683019/)
- [Variety: ‘Woman Unknown’ Director May el-Toukhy Talks the Torment of World War II ‘Horizontal Collaborators’ and Venice’s Female Director Snub: ‘It’s a Structural Problem’](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/woman-unknown-may-el-toukhy-world-war-ii-venice-directors-1236847532/)

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.