(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-09 14:23

VENICE - Chinese director Ang Lee Saturday picked up the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion for best picture for his spy thriller "Lust, Caution," just two years after taking the same award for "Brokeback Mountain."

Director Ang Lee holds the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice film festival September 8, 2007. Lee won for "Lust, Caution", a World War Two espionage thriller set in Shanghai.[Xinhua/Reuters]

This is the third consecutive year that a Chinese director has won the Golden Lion. Last year's best picture award went to Jia Zhangke for "Still Life."

Jia's "Wuyong", or 'Useless,' took the Orizzonti Doc Prize at this year's Venice Film Festival.

Lee's movie, called "Se, Jie" in Chinese, is set in the Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1940s. The boldness of the sex scenes in the movie between a spy girl played by novice actress Tang Wei and powerful political figure played by Tony Leung became a major topic at the festival.

Jury president Zhang Yimou said Lee's movie has won applause from all of the seven-member jury. Lee had made an excellent integration of international resources while filming "Lust, Caution," which played an important role in winning him the award, he said.

Lee told the red carpet prize ceremony that the movie "has taken me to some very difficult places."

Lee said he was accepting the prize "in the shadow of the passing of two great giants, Michaelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman."

The director said he would like to dedicate the award to Bergman, whom he saw while working on "Lust, Caution". "Ingmar hugged me the way a mother hugs a child. This hug was not for me, it was for you, the keepers of cinema," he said.

Bergman died on July 30, and Antonioni of Italy one day later.

Lee also expressed his gratitude to Chinese viewers and his colleagues in Hong Kong, saying that he hoped to share the award with all Chinese.

Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche's immigration drama "La Graine et le Mulet" ("The Secret of the Grain") had been the pre-award favorite for the Golden Lion.

It took away one of two runner-up jury prizes, while the other was won by U.S. director Todd Haynes for his "I'm Not There."