SWEDISH director Roy Andersson won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion on Saturday for his absurdist drama “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.” That counts as a feel-good ending to a contest whose fare often grappled with war, death and depression, both emotional and economic.

    The festival’s other avian contender, the widely praised Michael Keaton comeback movie “Birdman,” went home empty-handed, but still looks set to be an awards-season contender.

    Andersson’s series of bleakly comic vignettes — imagine Monty Python directed by Ingmar Bergman — had some critics in raptures, but left others scratching their heads. Set in a drab modern Sweden with occasional bursts of surrealism and song, “Pigeon” loosely follows two sad-sacks trying unsuccessfully to sell vampire teeth and other jokey novelties.

    Andersson, 71, said earlier in the week that his goal was to find poetry in the banal. Accepting his award, the director said Italian films — especially Vittorio de Sica’s neorealist masterpiece “Bicycle Thieves” — had a major impact on him.

    “You have such a fantastic film history,” he told his Italian hosts. “And I know that in Italy you have taste.”

    Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful documentary about the legacy of Indonesian massacres, “The Look of Silence,” won the runner-up award, the Grand Jury Prize.

    The festival’s Silver Lion for best director went to Russia’s Andrei Konchalovksy for “The Postman’s White Nights,” a largely silent drama set among villagers on a remote Russian island.

    Rising Hollywood star Adam Driver — who appears in the upcoming “Star Wars” film — and Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher took the acting prizes for playing a couple whose transition to parenthood goes chillingly wrong in “Hungry Hearts.”

    The festival jury gave a screenplay award to Iranian film “Tales,” and a special prize to Turkish director Kaan Mujdeci for “Sivas,” a drama about a neglected boy who forms a bond with a fighting dog.(SD-Agencies)