An Italian documentary about the Grande Raccordo Anulare ring road in Rome has won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, Digital Spy said.

Sacro GRA from director Gianfranco Rosi is the first documentary to ever win the prestigious Golden Lion. It is also the first Italian film to win the Golden Lion for 15 years.

Rosi called it "an incredible honour" to win the award, saying: "I didn't expect to win such an important prize with a documentary. It was truly an act of courage, a barrier has been broken."

According to BBC News, Rosi spent two years in a mini-van circling the ring road filming conversations with a cross-section of society that included a count, a paramedic and a botanist tending the thoroughfare's palm trees.

He dedicated the prize to the characters in the film "who allowed me to enter in their lives". Rosi's home-grown success comes in a year which saw the jury chaired by veteran Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and including Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher and British film-maker Andrea Arnold.

"Tonight I saw the maestro [Bertolucci] and he was extremely moved when he gave me the award," said Rosi "and this makes this even more important".

"I think that all the jury felt the poetic force of Rosi's film and that's all there is to be said," said Bertolucci, who won a career Golden Lion in 2007.

Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope won the 'Best Screenplay' award for the film Philomena, starring Coogan and Dame Judi Dench.

Italian star Elena Cotta won the 'Best Actress' prize for A Street in Palermo, despite not having any spoken lines in the film.

The Silver Lion for 'Best Director' was given to Greece's Alexandros Avranas for Miss Violence, while the film's Themis Panou won 'Best Actor'.

The nine-day Venice Film Festival opened with Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi thriller Gravity, starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.