BERLIN: The Berlin film festival wrapped up Sunday after “Fire at Sea,” a harrowing documentary about Europe’s refugee crisis, clinched its Golden Bear top prize from a jury led by Meryl Streep. Tunisia’s Majd Mastoura won the Silver Bear for best actor for his role in “Hedi,” a love story set in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, which also won best debut feature.

“I give this gift to the great Tunisian people, all the martyrs of the revolution, everyone who contributed to the revolution,” he said.

“I hope we will continue on being free, being happy, producing good art.”

As Europe grapples with its biggest migrant influx since World War II, the picture by Italian director Gianfranco Rosi offers an unflinching look at life on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where thousands of asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East have arrived trying to reach the European Union over the last two decades.

Thousands more have perished on the dangerous journey in rickety, overcrowded boats.

The Eritrean-born Rosi, who spent several months on Italy’s Lampedusa making the film, dedicated the prize to its residents “who open their hearts to other peoples.”

“I hope to bring awareness,” he said as he accepted the trophy from Streep.

“It is not acceptable that people die crossing the sea trying to escape from tragedies.”

The picture is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old local boy, Samuele Pucillo, and a doctor, Pietro Bartolo, who has been tending to the dehydrated, malnourished and traumatized new arrivals for a quarter-century.

Three-time Oscar-winner Streep said her seven-member jury was “swept away” by “Fire at Sea,” which she called “urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking.”

In other prizes, France’s Mia Hansen-Love won the Silver Bear for best director for her drama “Things to Come” starring Isabelle Huppert as a philosophy teacher whose marriage falls apart just as her elderly mother dies.