ITALY: Ang Lee's 'Lust, Caution wins best film in Venice while Brian De Palma gets best director with 'Redacted'

Taiwanese director Ang Lee's sexually explicit spy thriller "Lust, Caution" was the surprise winner of the top award at the Venice film festival on Saturday (September 8), just two years after he won with "Brokeback Mountain".The movie is a World War Two thriller set in Shanghai featuring long and sometimes violent sex scenes which Lee has hinted were real. When asked how he felt winning his second Golden Lion, Ang said:"Great, it feels even better than the first one. The first one feels light, happy and a lot of good-will. This one feels, we have earned it the hard way" The verdict means Asian directors have won the Golden Lion on the Lido waterfront for the last three years. The Silver Lion for best director went to U.S. film maker Brian De Palma, whose "Redacted" shocked audiences with its brutal reconstruction of the real-life rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006. When asked about his first Golden Lion, De Palma said:"I've won a Silver Bear in Berlin in 1968 almost 40 years ago, so it's a slow progression," he told journalists on his way to a news conference." De Palma said he was inspired by U.S. soldiers' blogs, journals and home-made videos posted on the Internet from Iraq. "This war is not going to be over quickly and the more we can show what's actually going on from the voices that come across the Internet, the better informed the American public will be and hopefully if they someday see the pictures, they may be out on the streets like we were in the 1960s" he told journalists at a news conference after the award ceremony. Australian-born Cate Blanchett won best actress as Boby Dylan in 'I'm not there' while Hollywood star Brad Pitt was the surprise winner of the best actor award for his portrayal of legendary outlaw Jesse James in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". Neither actors were in Venice to accept the award.

ITN Source | September 12, 2007

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