An Israeli movie took the grand prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
“Intimate Grammar,” based on the Israeli novel “Book of Intimate Grammar” by David Grossman, was awarded the $50,000 Sakura Grand Prize Film Award on Sunday.
The film, directed by Nir Bergman, is about the son of Holocaust survivors growing up in Israel in the early 1960s.
“Intimate Grammar” also won the prize for best film at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival. It received 12 nominations for the Ophir Awards—Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Awards—but received none.
Bergman is the first director to win the Sakura Prize twice. He also won in 2002 for his first feature film, “Broken Wings.”
The Best Director prize was awarded to Gilles Paquet-Brenner for “Sarah’s Key,” a French movie about the fate of a Jewish family during World War II. The movie also won the Audience Award.
