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Venice Film Festival Sees Sharp Drop in Female Directors in Competition, With May El-Toukhy Standing Solo
The Venice Film Festival's main competition line-up for this year includes only one female director, marking the sharpest drop in gender representation in five years. May El-Toukhy, the Danish-Egyptian director behind "Woman Unknown", is the sole woman among the 20 filmmakers competing for the Golden Lion, in a selection curated by festival chief Alberto Barbera. The fall is notable given that women had accounted for a relatively steady share of competition slots in recent editions, and several past female nominees have gone on to win top prizes.
Last year's competition featured six women out of 21 directors, around 29% of the line-up, including Kaouther Ben Hania, who won the grand jury prize, and Valérie Donzelli, who took best screenplay. This year's picture is more mixed elsewhere in the festival: the Horizons sidebar, also curated by Barbera, will see a record eight of 19 films directed by women (about 42%), while the independently run Venice Days sidebar will have a female majority, with 14 of 25 titles directed by women, including its opener, Lili Horváth's English-language debut "My Notes on Mars". Historically, female directors in competition have performed strongly, with wins in recent years for Audrey Diwan, Laura Poitras, Agnieszka Holland and others.
In short
- Only one woman, May El-Toukhy, in Venice's 2026 main competition
- Sharpest drop in female representation in five years, down from six in 2025
- Horizons and Venice Days sidebars show stronger, even majority, female representation
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The drop from 29% to just 5% female directors in the main competition in a single year is stark and concerning, particularly because female directors have recently won Venice's top awards and consistently demonstrate world-class talent. This suggests either selection bias—conscious or unconscious—or insufficient outreach to female filmmakers. Festival programming shapes industry opportunity and public visibility; when the main competition skews heavily male, it sends a concerning signal about where prestige in cinema resides, even if unintentional.
The case against
Festival selection should prioritise artistic merit and curatorial vision above demographic considerations. Without knowing what was submitted or the artistic reasoning behind selections, attributing this year's shift to bias is speculative. One year's variation does not necessarily signal systemic problems; female directors feature prominently elsewhere in the festival's programming. Selecting films partly to balance gender representation risks compromising artistic integrity and potentially undermining the legitimacy of the selected films themselves.
Explained simply
The Venice Film Festival is one of the world's most prominent annual cinema competitions, and its main competition awards the Golden Lion, one of cinema's highest honours. Selection for the main competition is highly competitive and brings significant international recognition and career opportunities to directors whose work is chosen.
Female directors have historically had a consistent presence in Venice's main competition line-ups and have performed notably well, with several winning the Golden Lion in recent years including Audrey Diwan, Laura Poitras and Agnieszka Holland. Previous female nominees have also won significant awards at the festival, including the grand jury prize and best screenplay recognition.
Given this historical record of female directors succeeding in the festival's most prestigious category, the composition of each year's competition becomes a point of interest for those tracking gender representation and opportunity within the global film industry. The festival's other programmes, including the Horizons sidebar and Venice Days showcase, operate under different selection processes and feature different proportions of female-directed films.