May el-Toukhy, one of only two women in competition at the Venice Film Festival this year, took the unusual step of stopping the screening of her Golden Lion contender Woman Unknown at its world premiere Sunday evening after the subtitles got out of sync.
The director was seen walking out of the screening to the sound of a ringing phone. Raised voices were then heard in the hall outside the auditorium prompting loud shushes from some spectators in close proximity.
Some five minutes later the lights went up and el-Toukhy returned to the room with the film’s producer Mikael Riek, who told the audience that the film would rewind by 15 minutes so that it could be enjoyed and understood in the correct manner.
A handful of spectators left but most stayed. By the end of the screening, el-Toukhy was all smiles, with she and her cast clearly touched by the warm 7 1/2-minute ovation.
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The film’s press agent confirmed to Deadline after the screening that el-Toukhy and her producer had called for the subtitles to be realigned and for the screening to be begin again from where they had started to fall out of sync.
Set in Denmark in the summer of 1945, el-Toukhy’s quietly powerful psychological drama takes its cue from the treatment of women suspected of fraternizing with German soldiers while Denmark was under occupation in World War Two.
Mathilde Arcel stars as nanny and housemaid Marie whose imminent marriage her to wealthy, older, widowed employer (Carsten Bjørnlund) comes under threat when a painful secret from past comes back to haunt her.
Earlier in the evening, el-Toukhy made a striking appearance on the red carpet in a dazzling white dress, with an embroidered red detail on the back, symbolizing blood.
There was surprise last July when el-Toukhy was the only woman announced for the main competition in Venice alongside 19 men. She has since been joined by Rachel Szor, co-director with Yuval Abraham of late addition Neza.
Talking to Deadline ahead of the world premiere, she said while she was delighted” and “honored” to be in competition, the lack of other women in the running for the Golden Lion this year has weighed on her since.
“It tells us there’s still lots of work to do,” she said. “I think it’s very, very much a structural problem that I myself have lots of experience with. I’ve been the only woman in many, many settings.”
“We’re all part of this structure and it’s just been on my mind since how severe this problem is and how structural it is. It’s as old as cinema and even older than that. And of course, my film also speaks about some of these matters, such as the invisibility of women, in a historical context.”
