Venice competition premiere

Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy presented her third feature film, Woman Unknown, in main competition at the Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2026. The period drama arrives seven years after her 2019 feature Queen of Hearts, which was remade in France by Catherine Breillat in 2023 as Last Summer. el-Toukhy developed the project following directing work on television series including The Crown and Cry Wolf. Co-written with screenwriter Maren Louise Käehne, the film was structured as a tri-nation co-production between Denmark, Sweden, and Latvia. The title is competing on the Lido for the festival's top honor, the Golden Lion.

Postwar narrative and themes

Set in Copenhagen in 1945, the story unfolds in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The narrative centers on Marie, played by Mathilde Arcel, an observant maid and nanny who is engaged to her wealthy, older employer Christian, played by Carsten Bjørnlund. Christian owns a garment and glove manufacturing factory and resides in an upper-middle-class apartment with his young daughter Leonora, portrayed by Flora Yde Sander, who keeps a hidden photograph of her late mother under her pillow. While preparing for the wedding, Marie is instructed to take the gown of Christian's deceased wife on public transport to a dressmaker for alterations. During this preparation, she conceals a wartime sexual relationship with a German soldier while facing the threat of discovery by resistance fighters.

Creative origins and perspective

El-Toukhy and Käehne conceived the project after studying a 1940s archival photograph of a woman sitting with a swastika painted onto her back. While the director initially explored a script centered on Reformation-era witch trials, she shifted the narrative to examine female survival and the targeting of women's bodies during national liberation.

“The reasons they were hunting these women were just not that interesting.”

The director stated that historical cinema surrounding the conflict had long neglected female accounts in favor of military combat.

“There have been so many films about the Second World War, and that is true. But they're all based mostly on men's experiences and recollections of war. So that really energized me. Let's just do another 100 films about the women in this time period, and then we can say we're over and done with it, you know?”

Production and critical reception

The production features cinematography by Jasper Spanning, production design by Sabine Hviid, and a drum-heavy musical score composed by Mikkel Hess. The supporting cast includes Marina Bouras as the strict housekeeper Esther and Sofia Nolsøe as Mrs Berg, an independent single mother living next door. In the streets outside the apartment, resistance groups operate with militia authority, shaving the heads of accused female collaborators and applying swastikas to their bodies and doorways. Critics on the Lido commended Arcel's controlled performance and noted the screenplay's thematic parallels to classic mid-century psychological thrillers, including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.