Venice 2026’s geopolitical and gender agenda

The tally of women is now a source of concern for film festival directors. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Biennale, will forgive us; he insists that Venice hosts a ‘Film Art Festival’ (he also insists on kissing the ladies’ hands, with elegance). But it is still a matter of counting. How many women are in competition? How many have won awards? We constantly ask ourselves: how much progress has been made toward gender equality? ‘One and a half female directors in the competition this year at the Festival,’ someone has calculated. By ‘half,’ they meant the co-director Rachel Szor of ‘NAZA’ (a title to be written entirely in capital letters; it is the acronym for collateral damage in Gaza).

The director in question is May el-Toukhy, a Danish woman of Egyptian origin: her film “Woman Unknown” tells the story of a waitress on the verge of marrying her employer, a widower. The story is set in Denmark in 1945. The Nazi occupiers have just been driven out. Women found guilty of collaboration were punished. After being beaten, a swastika was painted in red on their backs.

Having lamented the situation – only men, too many men everywhere – the jury president, Maggie Gyllenhaal, remained unyielding and consistent. The Golden Lion went to the only film in competition directed by a woman: Woman Unknown by May el-Toukhy. The scarcity of female characters worthy of awards also earned the film’s actress – the deeply moved and surprised Mathilde Arcel – the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress. This came at the expense of the Rooney sisters, Kate and Mara, who were sensational in Werner Herzog’s film Bucking Fastards (to be read by reversing the initials). They deliver all their lines in unison, playing mirror-image twins who are a bit mad, inspired by the true story of Freda and Greta Chaplin, who were born in York.

The Coppa Volpi for the actress – this isn’t the Berlinale or any of those other ‘woke’ festivals where no distinctions are made. She’s set for a brilliant career, and let’s hope that for the occasion she’ll learn how to dress: a white mini-dress that looked as if it had been cut into strips isn’t exactly in keeping with the gala evening. The ceremony was hosted – like the opening ceremony, and apart from a few slip-ups – by Greta Scarano (waving a watermelon-slice fan in solidarity with the Palestinian people) and Nicola Maupas (who starred in the prison drama Mare fuori).

The other Coppa Volpi was won by the great John Malkovich. A thoroughly deserved win, but given the current climate and the announcement by director Alberto Barbera – “it will be a political festival” – we suspect that his persona played in his favour. In the film Wilde Horse Nine, written and directed by Martin McDonagh (perhaps the finest playwright to have turned his hand to cinema), he plays a former CIA agent with Alzheimer’s. He spills the beans on the secrets of the trade and recounts having witnessed the assassination of JFK ‘from the other side’. He is on Easter Island – pardon, Rapa Nui – with a colleague to see the giants – pardon, Moai.

The geopolitical agenda continues with ‘Un bon petit soldat’, directed by the Frenchman Stéphane Brizé. The ‘labour and exploitation’ theme at film festivals is his speciality. He casts Alba Rohrwacher as the lead actress and wins an award for the screenplay. The Silver Lion for Best Director goes to “Dau” by Ilya Khrzhanovsky. It took 20 years of work to tell the story of a brilliant Greek physicist. In a secret, heavily guarded Soviet research laboratory, he was forced to work on an atomic bomb project for 40 years.

The Jury’s Special Prize, as was to be expected, went to “NAZA”. Interviews with military personnel, speaking on condition of anonymity, who describe the dirty work – noble souls, for war is always like that – of hunting down Hamas sympathisers in Gaza, who return home to sleep at night. The directors—both Israeli—are Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. He grabs the microphone to denounce ‘the dehumanisation of the Palestinians’. She—remember, she was the co-director—doesn’t say a single word. The film ‘Possible Love’, directed by cult director Lee Chang-dong—the only Korean who doesn’t rush things—wins the Grand Jury Prize.

The Italian contingent – five films in competition out of 21 – did not fare particularly well. No awards were won. Not even by Paolo Strippoli for "L’estranea", the most original title of the five: written and directed by him, and with a touch of horror (though the director rejects the label). A director in his early thirties – he was born in 1993 – and a film that will appeal to audiences. The same cannot be said of “The Echo Chamber”, directed by Andrea Pallaoro from a screenplay rediscovered in one of Bernardo Bertolucci’s drawers.