'Woman Unknown' makes history as sole female winner at Venice Film Festival

At the Venice Film Festival, one of cinema's oldest and most storied stages, a film called 'Woman Unknown' claimed the Golden Lion — the festival's highest honor — in 2026. Its director was the only woman among the major contenders, a solitary fact that speaks volumes about the industry's ongoing reckoning with whose visions are greenlit, financed, and elevated. The prize is both a genuine artistic recognition and a mirror held up to a landscape still working out who gets to tell the stories that matter.