Taiwanese director Ang Lee picked up his second Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for best picture last month for his new spy thriller "Lust, Caution."Lee, who won a Golden Lion and an Oscar for his groundbreaking 2005 gay cowboy movie "Brokeback Mountain," dedicated his win to Swedish film legend Ingmar Bergman, who died this year.

Lee saw Bergman while working on "Lust, Caution.""Ingmar hugged me the way a mother hugs a child," Lee said, adding: "This hug was not for me; it was for you, the keepers of cinema."Lee's victory established a growing Asian dominance at the Venice festival. Directors from the continent have won six of the last 10 Golden Lion awards.

The movie, called "Se, Jie" in Chinese, is a tense drama set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during the 1940s.

Newcomer Tang Wei plays a resistance spy who slowly lets her target, a powerful political figure played by Tony Leung, take over her heart.

"'Lust, Caution' has taken me to some very difficult places," Lee said. "I have invited you to come along with me and, in the end, to stay down there with me."Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt won the awards for best actress and best actor, and veteran U.S. director Brian De Palma won a special Silver Lion award for his hard-hitting Iraq war film "Redacted."