Danish actor Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice film festival on Saturday for her first leading feature role, in May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown, which also took the Golden Lion for best film. Shortly beforehand, she had flown back to Copenhagen to sign on at the job centre, as she claims unemployment benefits between acting jobs, before returning to the Lido for the awards ceremony after being advised it would be wise to attend. The win highlights the financial precarity many actors face even amid critical success, echoing a 2023 Equity report that found 63% of its UK members had received social security at some point.

Jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal said the panel's vote for Arcel had been unanimous, allowing them to bend Venice's usual rule against awarding more than one prize to the same film. Woman Unknown, set in the aftermath of Nazi-occupied Denmark, follows a housemaid, Marie, whose past threatens to expose her as a "horizontal collaborator" as she prepares to marry her employer. Since the win, Arcel's agent has reportedly fielded a flurry of new job offers from abroad, and the actor joked she now hopes to land a role in the British detective series Midsomer Murders. The best actor Volpi Cup went to Hollywood veteran John Malkovich.