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Israeli director Nadav Lapid on Saturday won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin film festival Saturday for his movie "Synonyms", about an expatriate in Paris wrestling with his identity.

The film tells the story of an Israeli young man who leaves Israel after his military service and tries to integrate into Paris without knowing the language and with full denial of where he came from.

Lapid dedicated the award and the film to his mother and the film’s editor, Era Lapid, who passed away during production.

“In this moment I think mainly about my most intimate artistic partner, my mother, Era Lapid. She edited all my films, she edited this film as well and she died during the editing," he said, according to i24NEWS.

"We edited this movie between editing rooms and hospitals. And that’s what she was doing in her last days. And my film is dedicated to her and if she exists somewhere for me, it’s in the cut [of the film] she has done and in what she refused to do – that’s where I can still see her,” Lapid said, almost in tears during his speech.

The Berlin Festival is considered one of the three most important festivals in the world alongside the Venice and Cannes festivals.