Winning director Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" won the Golden Lion for best film at the closing awards ceremonies for the 62nd Venice International Film Festival held recently.

"I am so glad the film has prevailed and has been accepted so well here, " said Lee, whose touching love portrait of two gay cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal set the audience abuzz following its screening. Ang Lee's tale of the homosexual love between two cowboys was set in the conservative West of the 1960s.

Jake Gyllenhaal has admitted that he was hesitant when he first heard about the cowboy movie with gay theme. But all his doubts disappeared when Jake learned that "BrokeBack Mountain" was to be directed by Academy award winning director, Ang Lee. Lee had previously directed the winning film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

At a news conference in Toronto, Gyllenhaal stressed that "when you know you have someone who's made movies that deal with pretty challenging themes and has tackled them with the kind of universality and compassion that Ang has, you throw yourselves into the arms of that person and you trust them and you feel safe and you go for it."

"Brokeback Mountain" is based on a novel by Annie Prouix and tells the story of a tormented affair between two men who meet one summer in western Wyoming while herding sheep. Though the film's gay theme had undoubtedly ruffled some conservative feathers due to the explicit scenes between two hot young male stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, it has already received considerable praise and pre-Oscar buzz.

Jake Gyllenhaal revealed that kissing a boy--Heath Ledger in the film--almost led to a broken nose for him. "He grabs me and he slams me up against the wall and kisses me, and then I grab him and I slam him up against the wall and I kiss him," he said during a news conference, adding that the love scenes were the most violent he'd ever done.

Heath Ledger admits that he was attracted to the project because it was a fresh take on the stereotyped and often humdrum Hollywood love story. In the film, the two cowboys fall in love, and their aching and forceful romance spans the course of close to 20 years. Ledger had complained about having to work out for the role. He was even surprised at all the work he's had to put in for the role. "You'd think you would kind of build up and work out to play a superhero or something, but it ends up being for a gay cowboy story," Ledger tells Jay Leno during an interview.

The 24-year-old Australian heartthrob Heath Ledger is looking forward to what is sure to be one of the most talked-about films of next year. "It's a gorgeous script, and God, Jake's cute," he jokingly tells Leno