64th Venice International Film Festival

Venice’s 63rd Festival, which programmed more than the usual number of American films and was supported by a bevy of Hollywood stars, was not, however, won by America but by Ang Lee’s for the second time in three years. His Mata Hari-like thriller Lust Caution, set in China and with a Chinese cast, was rumoured to be the compromise candidate after the jury of film-makers, chaired by Zhang Yimou, argued long and hard about the merits of two other films. One was La graine et le mulet (France), which gained the FIPRESCI Prize, and the other Todd Haynes’ “ruminative biography” of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There. In the end, both films received Lions, with Kate Blanchett, who plays Dylan in the Haynes film along with five other actors, also winning the Best Actress Prize. Brad Pitt, who appeared as Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, won Best actor and Brian de Palma won Best Director for Redacted, his “improvised documentary” about the Iraq war. (Derek Malcolm)