Venice Film Festival 2009 Winners

Venice Film Festival’s jury announced the movie “Lebanon” was the winner of the Golden Lion on the last day of the 11-day screening of films from around the world.

“Lebanon,” tells the story of Israeli paratroopers searching a hostile town. The movie is a look at war from inside a military tank by Israeli helmer Samuel Maoz, based on his personal experience as a young soldier during his country’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

“I dedicate this award to all those thousands of people all over the world who came back from the war, like me, safe and sound. Apparently they are fine. They walk, get married, have children. But inside them, the memories will remain stuck in their souls,” said Maoz at the award ceremony.

The Silver Lion for best director went to New York-based Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat for her first feature “Women Without Men,” an Iranian film about women and repression.

Neshat launched an appeal to the Iranian government to “give the people of Iran what they should have: basic human rights, freedom, democracy.”

“Soul Kitchen,” set amid the hip and grungy multi-ethnic set in his native Hamburg, by German-Turkish director Fatih Akin, won the Special Jury Prize.
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