South Korean director Kim Ki-duk's drama about a mother-son relationship has won the Golden Lion for best film at the 69th Venice Film Festival in Italy.
Pieta shows how the life of a brutal loan shark is changed by the appearance of a woman who claims to be his mother.
The 51-year-old director won the best director awards in Venice for 3-Iron and at the Berlin Film Festival for Samaritan girl in 2004. Last year, his film Arirang earned the top prize in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival.
In Venice, the Silver Lion for the best director went to US film maker Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master, a film loosely based on the Church of Scientology in the United States after World War II.
US actors Paul Seymour Hoffman and Joaquim Phoenix shared the best actor prize for their roles in The Master. The best actress award went to Israeli Hada Yaron for her role in Fill the Void, a film by Israeli director Rama Burshtein about an ultra-Orthodox family in Tel Aviv.
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French director Olivier Assayas won the best screenplay award for Apres Mai (Something in the Air), a movie on the aftermath of the May 1968 youth riots, while the Special Jury Prize went to Paradise: Faith by Austria's Ulrich Seidl.
Italians Daniele Cipri and Fabrizio Falco won best photographer and best emerging actor awards respectively for their roles in the films La Bella Addormentata (The Sleeping Beauty) and E' Stato Il Figlio (The Son Did It).
The Venice Film Festival is the oldest of its kind in the world. Eighteen films competed for the Gold Lion.
