A scriptwriter would call it irony.

Just as the Toronto International Film Festival gets underway, a film shot in Toronto by a Toronto-based director has won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a fantasy-horror film, won the Golden Lion Award Sunday, the Italian festival’s last day.

The Mexican-born director says winning the award was like running and winning a marathon. It took six years to bring “The Shape of Water” to the screen.

Del Toro has produced and directed most of his movies at the huge Pinewood Toronto Studios facility in recent years.