Venice Film Festival Sees Sharp Drop in Female Directors in Competition, With May El-Toukhy Standing Solo

The Venice Film Festival has suffered its steepest decline in female representation in five years, with just one woman director selected for this edition’s main competition. It marks a dramatic fall from the six female filmmakers in last year’s edition, which saw Kaouther Ben Hania win the grand jury prize for “The Voice of Hind Rajab” and Valérie Donzelli earn best screenplay for “At Work.”

Danish-Egyptian director May El-Toukhy’s drama “Woman Unknown” is the sole female-directed film among the 20 titles competing for the Golden Lion at Venice this year, the lineup for which is curated by longtime chief Alberto Barbera.

In recent editions, the official competition had maintained a relatively steady level of female representation. Last year, six of the festival’s 21 competition films were directed by women, including works by Mona Fastvold, Kathryn Bigelow, Enyedi Ildikó, Shu Qi, Donzelli and Ben Hania — making up 29% of the slate.

In stark contrast with the competition, the Horizons section — also curated by Barbera and built around emerging voices and cutting edge works — will break its own record with eight out of 19 films directed by women, repping roughly 42% of the section. Out of these, at least two — Alina Marazzi with “La Ragazza Con La Leica” and Rubaiyat Hossain with “The Difficult Bride” — were understood to have been considered for a competition upgrade at some point. Anuparna Roy, who won the section’s best first film and director prizes last year with “Songs of the Forgotten Trees,” is also back with her sophomore outing, “Lovers in the Blue Night.”

Elsewhere at the festival, Venice Days, the independently run sidebar that’s curated by Gaia Furrer, will actually boast a female majority with 14 films directed by women out of 25 titles. That lineup also opens with Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát’s English-language debut “My Notes on Mars,” starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend.

Interestingly, a large proportion of female directors who vied for a Golden Lion within the last five years have taken home major awards. In 2021, Audrey Diwan won the Golden Lion for “Happening,” while Jane Campion took the Silver Lion for “The Power of the Dog” and Maggie Gyllenhaal won best screenplay for “The Lost Daughter.” The following year, Laura Poitras won the Golden Lion for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” with Alice Diop taking the grand jury prize for “Saint Omer.” In 2023, Agnieszka Holland won the special jury prize for “Green Border.” 2024 saw a double win for women in the top prizes below the Golden Lion: Maura Delpero took the grand jury prize for “Vermiglio,” and Dea Kulumbegashvili won the special jury prize for “April.” And last year, Ben Hania and Donzelli won the grand jury prize and best screenplay, respectively.

El-Toukhy’s “Woman Unknown” is already one of the anticipated highlights of the roster. The director comes to Venice with a prestige pedigree, having previously won Sundance’s Audience Award with her subversive film “Queen of Hearts,” about a successful lawyer who starts a dangerous affair with her teenage stepson. In “Woman Unknown,” a young housemaid guarding a shameful secret is about to marry the wealthy widower she works for.

Yet, this year’s sharp drop in women directors in competition will likely reignite scrutiny over Venice’s record on gender representation. The festival was among the last major international film festivals to sign the 50/50 gender parity pledge in 2018. At the time, Barbera argued he would never select films simply because they were directed by women and has consistently rejected quotas, maintaining that the imbalance reflects the pool of submissions rather than the selection process. But the significant number of female directors elsewhere in the lineup raises questions about why so few made the jump into the main competition and reflects a deliberate editorial choice by Barbera.

The contrast is particularly notable when compared with Cannes. While the French festival remains far from parity, it has maintained a considerably steadier level of female representation in competition over the past five editions, selecting five women-directed films in 2022, seven in 2023, four in 2024, a record seven in 2025 and five again this year. During that period, Cannes also awarded two Palme d’Or to women directors — Julia Ducournau with “Titane” and Justine Triet with “Anatomy of a Fall.”