Venice lineup highlights Norwegian participation and Danish May el-Toukhy

As the programme of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival was unveiled late July, an absence of A-list Hollywood fare could be noted, while a respectable selection of independent filmmakers, not least in the documentary field, as well as an array of world cinema luminaries will grace the Lido with their presence and works during the 2-12 September dates of the 2026 edition.

Werner Herzog, Nanni Moretti, Danny Boyle, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Shinya Tsukamoto, Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller, Casey Affleck and Lee Chang-dong are all found in the main competition section. Out of competition and in the side sections, Paul Schrader, Kornél Mundruczó, Gianni Amelio, Lav Diaz, Tsai Ming-liang, Sergei Loznitsa, Wim Wenders, Amos Gitai, Takashi Miike, Russell Crowe, Alex Gibney, Luca Guadagnino and Robert Guédigian represent established degrees of quality directing. A special pièce de résistance is said to be the music documentary Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger, featuring the first joint interview of Liam and Noel Gallagher after some two decades of estrangement, reportedly also bringing the testy twosome to the festival for some joint brotherhood bonhomie.

Of certain note is also the relative scarcity of female directors, although Barbara Kopple, Laura Poitras, Saorsie Ronan and Maggie Gyllenhaal (also the head of this year’s jury, playing out of competition) are in participation – several with short films – and the Orizzonti section does include a good handful of female talent.

Out of the 20 competition entries, one is by a woman: Denmark’s May el-Toukhy, whose ground-breaking Queen of Hearts (Dronningen, 2019), later remade in France by Catherine Breillat as Last Summer (L'Été dernier, 2023), should warrant a spot. el-Toukhy, these days increasingly busy with her contribution to the Dogma 25 movement, the birth of which she has been an instrumental force in, presents Woman Unknown (Kvinde, ukendt), the one Nordic competition entry at Venice this year.

The film, written by el-Toukhy together with her ever-regular script partner Maren Louise Käehne, takes the viewer back to 1946 and post-war Denmark, liberated after five years of Nazi occupation. Here, an engagement is announced, between a young housekeeper and her employer, a widowed father of two. But the housekeeper has a secret past that will disrupt the wedding plans. “With Woman Unknown I want to explore the idea of the female body as a public domain, a public matter for society to pass judgement on regardless of time and place. I am preoccupied with what it does to a person to carry the burden of a concealed secret for too long, the stigma, the shame – internalised and collective,” reads el-Toukhy’s director’s statement. Mathilde Arcel and Carsten Bjørnlund star, with Nordisk Film’s Michael Rieks producing with co-production by Zentropa, Nordisk Film Sweden and Nafta Films, Latvia. Woman Unknown has support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

Swedish co-production is found through Plattform, which participates in the mainly German competition entry DAU by Russian-born and currently Berlin-based Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who instigated this multidisciplinary project, thus far producing 14 feature films, three TV series, and various immersive installations, in 2006. Co-production on this 2026 outing is by France, Ukraine and Sweden.

The intriguingly titled No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman, playing in the official out-of-competition fiction section, is the latest work from Kurdish-born, Norway-based Halkawt Mustafa, whose previous works Red Heart (Rødt hjerte, 2011), The Classic (El clásico, 2015) and Hiding Saddam Hussein (Han gjemte Saddam Hussein, 2019) has put him on the map as a driving and able force to count on. This Norwegian production, by Janne Hjeltnes at Hene Films with co-production by Iraq, Sweden (The Chimney Pot), France and UAE, tells the story of a Kurdish female sniper who sets out to find her younger sister after an ISIS assault. “It’s a film we’ve carried with us for nine years,” states the director, who promises “a story about Kurdish women who refused to bow to darkness”.

Most of the Nordic involvement at this year’s Venice involves a female creator. The Pervert's Guide to Utopias, directed by UK’s Sophie Fiennes, is written and presented by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The out-of-competition-playing documentary completes a two-decade-long cinematic trilogy exploring philosophy, psychoanalysis, and popular culture. Norway’s Mattima Films is co-producer on this multi-national creation.

Zentropa Sweden is co-producer on Alina Marazzi’s The Girl with the Leica (La ragazza con la Leica), the true account of German press photographer Gerda Taro, who lost her life during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The film, based on Helena Janeczek's novel, stars Emilia Schüle, and plays in the Orizzonti section.

The Final Cut section, providing support for independent filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East, includes two titles with support from Norway’s Sørfond, seemingly never missing out on a major festival these days: the Moroccan Eldorado: The Taste of the South (Eldorado, le goût du sud) with Norwegian co-production by DUOFilm, and the Ethiopian Mehal Sefari with Norwegian co-production by Barentsfilm.

Norwegian participation, prominent at Venice this year, also turns up in the acclaimed Venice Immersive section, where a VR experience based on the life and works of textile artist Frida Hansen, Finding Frida by Hilde K. Kjøs, will be experienced.

Full information on Venezia 83: CLICK HERE.