--- title: 'Venice Put One Woman in Competition. Its Own Horizons Lineup Says That Was a Choice' type: 'blog post' section: 'The Argument' standfirst: 'May el-Toukhy''s Woman Unknown is the only film directed by a woman competing for this year''s Golden Lion. Alberto Barbera says the films were not there. The section he programmed one floor down, where a record forty-two per cent of the directors are women, is the problem with that answer.' author: 'CinePixo' published: '2026-08-20' updated: '2026-08-20' about_people: - 'May el-Toukhy' - 'Kaouther Ben Hania' - 'Valérie Donzelli' - 'Kathryn Bigelow' - 'Mona Fastvold' - 'Ildikó Enyedi' - 'Shu Qi' - 'Audrey Diwan' - 'Jane Campion' - 'Maggie Gyllenhaal' - 'Laura Poitras' - 'Alice Diop' - 'Agnieszka Holland' - 'Maura Delpero' - 'Dea Kulumbegashvili' - 'Julia Ducournau' - 'Justine Triet' - 'Lili Horvát' - 'Mackenzie Davis' - 'Rupert Friend' about_films: - 'Queen of Hearts (2019)' - 'The Power of the Dog (2021)' - 'The Lost Daughter (2021)' - 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)' - 'Saint Omer (2022)' - 'Green Border (2023)' - 'Vermiglio (2024)' - 'Titane (2021)' - 'Anatomy of a Fall (2023)' tags: - 'Venice Film Festival 2026 female directors' - 'May el-Toukhy Woman Unknown' - 'Alberto Barbera competition selection' - 'Venice Horizons Orizzonti 2026' - 'film festival gender parity' - 'Golden Lion women directors' sources: - 'https://variety.com/2026/film/global/venice-film-festival-drop-female-directors-may-el-toukhy-1236818979/' - 'https://www.vogue.com/article/why-is-only-one-woman-competing-for-venice-film-festivals-top-prize' - 'https://deadline.com/2026/07/italian-bodies-slam-venice-lack-of-women-competition-2026-1237004575/' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/venice-put-one-woman-in-competition-its-own-horizons-lineup-says-that-was-a-choice' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # Venice Put One Woman in Competition. Its Own Horizons Lineup Says That Was a Choice *May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown is the only film directed by a woman competing for this year's Golden Lion. Alberto Barbera says the films were not there. The section he programmed one floor down, where a record forty-two per cent of the directors are women, is the problem with that answer.* By CinePixo, 2026-08-20 · The Argument ## The number is one May el-Toukhy's *Woman Unknown* is the only film directed by a woman in this year's Venice competition. Vogue counted the rest: nineteen films contending for the Golden Lion, all of them directed by men. Variety arrived at the same picture from the other side — one woman among the twenty titles Alberto Barbera selected. Last year there were six, out of twenty-one, which Variety put at twenty-nine per cent. Kaouther Ben Hania was among them and took the grand jury prize for *The Voice of Hind Rajab*; Valérie Donzelli won best screenplay for *At Work*. Kathryn Bigelow, Mona Fastvold, Ildikó Enyedi and Shu Qi were in that competition too. Six to one in a single edition is the steepest fall Venice has recorded in five years. Six Italian film organisations, among them the Italian branches of the European Women's Audiovisual Network and Women in Film Television & Media, put an open letter in *La Repubblica* calling the selection one-dimensional and male-dominated. ## Barbera says the films were not there His explanation, given to The Hollywood Reporter and quoted by Vogue, is worth reading in full rather than in summary, because it makes two separate claims. "I would love to be able to find more female-directed films to put in competition," he said. "But it simply was not possible, for many reasons. The number of films made by women has decreased... And the quality of the ones we saw was not such that we could put them in competition." He called it "a temporary negative situation" and said he hoped next year would improve. The first claim is about supply. The second is about quality. Barbera has been consistent about the principle underneath both — he has rejected quotas for years, and Venice was among the last major festivals to sign the fifty-fifty parity pledge, in 2018 — and a programmer who refuses to select a film because of who directed it is holding a defensible position. I do not think the position is the problem here. The evidence is. ![Julia Ducournau photographed on the Lido during the 82nd Venice Film Festival.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/607811d1-d058-4cfa-995e-832b6e5dfaa7.webp) *Photo: LucaFazPhoto · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Julia_Ducournau_at_82nd_Venice_International_Film_Festival_(2_of_3).jpg)* ## They were there, one section over Horizons, the section for emerging and formally adventurous work, is curated by Barbera as well. It broke its own record this year: eight of its nineteen films are directed by women, roughly forty-two per cent. Two of those eight — Alina Marazzi's *La Ragazza Con La Leica* and Rubaiyat Hossain's *The Difficult Bride* — were understood to have been considered for a move up into competition at some point. Anuparna Roy is back in the section with *Lovers in the Blue Night*, a year after winning its best first film and best director prizes for *Songs of the Forgotten Trees*. Venice Days, the sidebar curated by Gaia Furrer and run independently, went further: fourteen of its twenty-five films are directed by women. It opens with Lili Horvát's English-language debut *My Notes on Mars*, with Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend. So the films exist. They were submitted, watched, and selected — by the same person, in the same building, for the same festival, in the same month. What did not happen is the twenty-odd slots where the Golden Lion is decided. That is the gap the supply argument cannot cover. If the pool had thinned to the point where one film was all that could be found, Horizons would not be at a record. And if the quality were the issue, it is strange that two of the films judged good enough for a competition conversation ended up in the section that does not have the prize. ![A portrait of the director Audrey Diwan, who won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2021.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/37bdbb64-ace5-4454-a214-22e42b5aaf81.webp) ![The director Agnieszka Holland, photographed in July 2026.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/583af897-d407-4eaf-8216-7bece896fdb8.webp) *Photos: EthicalComics · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Audrey_Diwan.jpg); Tomasz Leśniowski · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agnieszka_Holland_07_2026.jpg)* ## The winners were not a courtesy One more count, because it answers the quietest version of the objection — the idea that women were being waved through and are now being held to the real standard. In 2021, Audrey Diwan won the Golden Lion for *Happening*, Jane Campion took the Silver Lion for *The Power of the Dog*, and Maggie Gyllenhaal won best screenplay for *The Lost Daughter*. In 2022, Laura Poitras won the Golden Lion for *All the Beauty and the Bloodshed* and Alice Diop the grand jury prize for *Saint Omer*. In 2023, Agnieszka Holland took the special jury prize for *Green Border*. In 2024, Maura Delpero won the grand jury prize for *Vermiglio* and Dea Kulumbegashvili the special jury prize for *April*. Then last year's two. Five consecutive editions in which the women in competition left with major awards. Juries change every year and they are not Barbera's, which is the point: independent panels kept reaching the same verdict about the films he had put in front of them. Cannes, over the same five editions, held a steadier line without ever reaching parity — five women-directed films in competition in 2022, seven in 2023, four in 2024, a record seven in 2025, five again this year — and gave the Palme d'Or to Julia Ducournau for *Titane* and Justine Triet for *Anatomy of a Fall*. ![The director Justine Triet, photographed in 2023.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/a4117579-264b-4164-8385-f70e55f4dd5f.webp) *Photo: ManoSolo13241324 · [CC0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justine_Triet_2023_1.jpg)* ## What the one film is *Woman Unknown* is about a young housemaid with a shameful secret, on the point of marrying the wealthy widower she works for. El-Toukhy's last feature, *Queen of Hearts*, won the audience award at Sundance and was about a successful lawyer who begins an affair with her teenage stepson — a filmmaker who is drawn to women whose respectability is a held breath. It is a good film to be carrying a competition. It should not have to carry it alone, and the lineup two sections away is the evidence that it did not have to. ## In this piece - [May el-Toukhy](https://cinepixo.com/people/may-el-toukhy) - [Kaouther Ben Hania](https://cinepixo.com/people/kaouther-ben-hania) - [Valérie Donzelli](https://cinepixo.com/people/valerie-donzelli) - [Kathryn Bigelow](https://cinepixo.com/people/kathryn-bigelow) - [Mona Fastvold](https://cinepixo.com/people/mona-fastvold) - [Ildikó Enyedi](https://cinepixo.com/people/ildiko-enyedi) - [Shu Qi](https://cinepixo.com/people/shu-qi) - [Audrey Diwan](https://cinepixo.com/people/audrey-diwan) - [Jane Campion](https://cinepixo.com/people/jane-campion) - [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://cinepixo.com/people/maggie-gyllenhaal) - [Laura Poitras](https://cinepixo.com/people/laura-poitras) - [Alice Diop](https://cinepixo.com/people/alice-diop) - [Agnieszka Holland](https://cinepixo.com/people/agnieszka-holland) - [Maura Delpero](https://cinepixo.com/people/maura-delpero) - [Dea Kulumbegashvili](https://cinepixo.com/people/dea-kulumbegashvili) - [Julia Ducournau](https://cinepixo.com/people/julia-ducournau) - [Justine Triet](https://cinepixo.com/people/justine-triet) - [Lili Horvát](https://cinepixo.com/people/lili-horvat) - [Mackenzie Davis](https://cinepixo.com/people/mackenzie-davis) - [Rupert Friend](https://cinepixo.com/people/rupert-friend) - 2019 · [Queen of Hearts](https://cinepixo.com/movies/queen-of-hearts-2019) - 2021 · [The Power of the Dog](https://cinepixo.com/movies/the-power-of-the-dog-2021) - 2021 · [The Lost Daughter](https://cinepixo.com/movies/the-lost-daughter-2021) - 2022 · [All the Beauty and the Bloodshed](https://cinepixo.com/movies/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed-2022) - 2022 · [Saint Omer](https://cinepixo.com/movies/saint-omer-2022) - 2023 · [Green Border](https://cinepixo.com/movies/green-border-2023) - 2024 · [Vermiglio](https://cinepixo.com/movies/vermiglio-2024) - 2021 · [Titane](https://cinepixo.com/movies/titane-2021) - 2023 · [Anatomy of a Fall](https://cinepixo.com/movies/anatomy-of-a-fall-2023) ## Sources - https://variety.com/2026/film/global/venice-film-festival-drop-female-directors-may-el-toukhy-1236818979/ - https://www.vogue.com/article/why-is-only-one-woman-competing-for-venice-film-festivals-top-prize - https://deadline.com/2026/07/italian-bodies-slam-venice-lack-of-women-competition-2026-1237004575/ Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/venice-put-one-woman-in-competition-its-own-horizons-lineup-says-that-was-a-choice Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.