Hadas Yaron won the best actress award at the 69th Venice Film Festival on Saturday night. Yaron stared in Fill the Void, a film by director Rama Burshtein that received rave reviews in Variety magazine, Hollywood Reporter and Screen Daily.
Yaron is the first Israeli to win best actress at the Venice Film Festival.
The festival's main award – the Golden Lion went to South Korean director Kim Ki-duk's shocking drama "Pieta."
The Silver Lion for best director went to Paul Thomas Anderson for ''The Master," inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The film's stars, Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, shared the prize for best actor during the ceremony on Saturday.
Fill the Void, produced by Assaf Amir, tells the story of an 18-year-old Haredi girl who is happily looking forward to an arranged marriage, when her sister dies. She is then pressured to marry her bereaved brother-in-law instead, forcing her to make a choice.
"Pieta" follows a young loan shark as he goes about his business maiming debtors to collect insurance money. His ruthless course is interrupted by a stranger who claims to be his mother and his acceptance of her opens in him a sense of pity for his former victims.