Lebanon, a story about Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon told almost entirely from inside a tank, won the top award at the Venice Film Festival. Colin Firth and Ksenia Rappoport won the prizes for best actor and actress, respectively.
In the lineup of this year’s festival contenders, political films attracted the most attention. Lebanon, is based on the wartime experiences of first-time Israeli director Samuel Maoz.
Maoz, on accepting his prize on Saturday, said he dedicated the prize to war veterans worldwide.
"This is dedicated to all the thousands of people around the world who, like me, come back from war safe and sound but who have the memory of their experiences stabbed into their souls," he said.
Firth won the Coppa Volpi for best actor for his portrayal of a homosexual professor struggling with the loss of his partner in Tom Ford’s A Single Man. Rappoport took the Coppa Volpi for her role as an immigrant hotel worker who becomes involved in a robbery plot in Giuseppe Capotondi’s thriller The Double Hour.
The Silver Lion prize for best director went to Shirin Neshat for Women Without Men, based on a banned book about Iran in the 1950s.
