The award winners for the Venice Film Festival have been announced, but quite the controversy has arisen from the ceremony.  THR reports that the Michael Mann-led jury was poised to give Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, but due to a ridiculous festival rule they opted to give the award to Kim Ki-Duk‘s revenge film Pieta instead.  Apparently the Venice Film Festival’s new rules state that one film cannot win more than two major awards, so in lieu of the Silver Lion directing award going to Anderson and the acting award being split by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, the jury was asked to reconvene and “remove” one of The Master‘s awards.

As one can imagine, a heated jury session followed that ultimately resulted in The Master’s Golden Lion being taken away.  Ah, awards season.  Nevertheless, the film is currently making the rounds at the Toronto Film Festival so check back on Collider soon for Matt’s full review.  In the meantime, hit the jump to check out the full list of awards from the Venice Film Festival.

The line-up for the 2012 Venice Film Festival has been announced and it’s a surprisingly lean year.  Usually, there’s a lot of overlap between the Toronto International Film Festival and Venice, but the only major crossovers are Terrence Malick‘s To the Wonder, Robert Redford‘s The Company You Keep, Ramin Bahrani‘s At Any Price, Mira Nair‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Ariel Vromen‘s The Iceman.  Venice does have a few standout exclusives this year, most notably Brian De Palma‘s new film, Passion, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace.  Other notable exclusives include Abdallah Omeish‘s Witness: Libya (executive produced by Michael Mann) and Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers.

Hit the jump for the full line-up.  The 2012 Venice Film Festival runs August 29 – September 8th.