With the working title WOMAN, UNKNOWN, the film it is set in a post-WW2 Denmark and revolves around a young woman who over the course of three days, attempts to escape her carefully suppressed secret to embark the new life she has created for herself.  

May el-Toukhy is co-writing the script with screenwriter Maren Louise Käehne with whom she also worked on QUEEN OF HEARTS. The film will be produced by Academy Award nominated producer Mikael Christian Rieks (LAND OF MINE, BOUNDLESS) for Nordisk Film Production. Principal photography is expected to begin in the first half of 2025. 

May el-Toukhy is best known for the critically acclaimed and award-winning film QUEEN OF HEARTS (2019), of which the French remake L’ÉTÉ DERNIER (LAST SUMMER, 2023), directed by Catherine Breillat, was selected for the main competition at Cannes 2023. May el-Toukhy made her debut with the comedy drama LONG STORY SHORT (2015) and has since then directed multiple episodes of series such as CRY WOLF (2020), THE LEGACY (2017), and, more recently, episodes of Peter Morgan’s Netflix hit series THE CROWN (2022/2023).

“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 – internalized and collective,” says May el-Toukhy.

After Denmark’s liberation from the Nazis, many women who had fraternized with the Wehrmacht were punished for horizontal collaboration. They were considered traitors who had used their bodies to collaborate. They were publicly humiliated; their heads were shaved, and they were beaten and ostracized. Some places in Europe they were also sent to camps without legal proceedings.    

WOMAN, UNKNOWN revolves around a young woman, Marie, who is preparing a lavish dinner party in the bourgeois household of which she now belongs. It is a party intended to cement her ascent to a new social status by announcing her engagement to the patriarch of the house, a widowed father of two, for whom she has worked as a housekeeper. Over the course of three days, the tentacles of Marie’s secret suddenly reach out and lift the veil from her past – one she’s worked so hard to bury. She must act quickly to maintain her position, but how far is she willing to go to protect her safety?