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VENICE: Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh's latest film ''Contagion'' can be considered a 105-minute public service announcement with a simple message: Wash your hands. Often.
Certainly audience members will consider the implications of having just watched a film, perhaps in a crowded theater, about the global spread of a lethal surface-borne virus with a kill rate of 25 per cent.
Soderbergh acknowledges that he has been washing his hands a bit more since working on the film. But the director of ''Traffic'' says he's been shaking hands all the same since he arrived in Venice, where his film makes its world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
''Contagion'' features Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard and Lawrence Fishburne.
