Venice’s Lone Female Competition Director May el-Toukhy on Gender Gap: “I’ve Never Heard a Female Director Being Called a Genius”

When the Venice Film Festival unveiled its competition lineup last month, May el-Toukhy’s name was the only woman’s on a list of 20. A late addition, the documentary Neza, co-directed by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, has since made her one of two. The Danish director says the arithmetic has stayed with her.

“It tells us there’s still lots of work to do,” el-Toukhy said at the press conference for Woman Unknown, her post-World War II psychological thriller, which premieres in competition at the Lido on Sunday. “I think it’s very, very much a structural problem that I myself have lots of experience with. I’ve been the only woman in many, many settings.”

El-Toukhy traces the imbalance back through the entire pipeline of a filmmaking career. “Going all the way back to when we get out of film school as female filmmakers, to getting our first film done, and getting our second film done, the budgets we work under, and even sometimes the actors that say yes and the actors that say no,” she said. “The way the media creates stories around male directors as geniuses… I’ve never heard a female director being called a genius.”

El-Toukhy said the gender gap predates this year’s festival’s selection. “We’re all part of this structure and it’s just been on my mind since how severe this problem is and how structural it is. It’s as old as cinema and even older than that. And of course, my film also speaks about some of these matters, such as the invisibility of women, in a historical context.”

Woman Unknown is set in a Danish city in the summer of 1945, months after the German occupation ended. Marie (Mathilde Arcel), a nanny and housemaid, is about to marry her wealthy, older, widowed employer, Christian (Carsten Bjørnlund). During the war she was in a relationship with a German soldier, and as women who fraternized with the occupiers are hunted down and publicly shamed in the streets, she moves to keep her past from surfacing.

Woman Unknown, is El-Toukhy’s third feature after Long Story Short and Queen of Hearts. Mikael Rieks produced for Nordisk Film Production A/S, in co-production with Nafta Films, Nordisk Film Production Sweden and Film i Väst. TrustNordisk handles international sales.

As for landing in Venice competition this year, in an interview with THR, el-Toukhy said she was more than ready.

“I’ve worked 16 hours a day for more than a year. I’ve spent all my savings. I’ve used every part of me to make this film and all the resources, all the muscle power I have. I can’t really do any more, so therefore I feel okay.” She added: “And I think getting into the festival and being in competition, I’ve already won.”