Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron won the Golden Lion top prize at the Venice film festival on Saturday for "Roma", which critics called not merely a movie but "a vision".
With its highly emotional story centred on an indigenous maid working for a middle-class family in Mexico City in 1971, it has been hailed as Cuaron's most personal film - and also his best.
Cuaron told reporters that in an incredible coincidence "today is the birthday of Libo, the woman the movie is based on. What a present!"
The film industry bible Variety said "Roma" is likely to go down as a "masterpiece".
"It is no mere movie - it's a vision... where every image and every emotion is perfectly set in place," said critic Owen Gleiberman.
Cuaron "dunks us, moment by moment, image by luminously composed image, into a panorama of the hurly-burly of Mexico City."
The Italian press declared it "sublime" while for The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw it was a "complete triumph.”
Venice has become the launchpad for the Oscars race, with Hollywood heavyweights jostling for attention in a line-up director Alberto Barbera called "the best in 30 years.”
