May el-Toukhy's 'Woman Unknown' Wins Golden Lion at Venice 2026

In her acceptance speech, el-Toukhy described the production as financially and emotionally challenging, stating she spent all her savings and worked 16 hours a day for over a year to tell the story of invisible women. She thanked Gyllenhaal specifically for addressing the lack of equal opportunities for female directors in the competition. Mathilde Arcel received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her performance, marking a rare instance where the festival awarded both the top film prize and the acting honor to the same production.

Gyllenhaal explained that the jury reached a unanimous vote for Arcel, allowing them to make an exception to the usual rule of awarding only one prize per film. Lee Chang-dong won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for Possible Love, a social drama about a struggling working-class family and a documentarian who becomes involved with them. The Korean filmmaker collected the award alongside his ensemble cast, which included veteran actors Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu.

Possible Love also secured the Fipresci Award for best film in Venice and has been selected by South Korea as its submission for the Oscars' best international feature category. Ilya Khrzhanovsky took home the Silver Lion for Best Director for DAU, a visually stunning biopic of Soviet physicist Lev Landau filmed in Ukraine over three years. Khrzhanovsky stated he wished for peace and success for the Ukrainian government.

The documentary NAZA, produced by The Guardian and directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, received the Special Jury Prize following a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere. The film features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers alleging that Israel uses specific protocols to target and kill civilians in Gaza. During the acceptance speech, Abraham noted the difficulty of standing before politicians and journalists who deny the film's reality without having seen it.

John Malkovich claimed the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his role as an erratic CIA agent in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, though he accepted the award via video link from the United States. The pitch-black buddy comedy, which also stars Sam Rockwell, is distributed worldwide by Searc and was among the biggest crowd-pleasers of the festival. The post-World War Two drama, a co-production of Denmark, Sweden, and Latvia, emerged as the sole film in competition directed exclusively by a woman.

The Russian filmmaker, who renounced his citizenship and holds dual German and Israeli nationality, addressed the controversy surrounding the film's inclusion, which was criticized by the Ukrainian government due to his refusal to condemn the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The jury president told reporters after the ceremony that Arcel would blow their socks off with her work.