The opening film of this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival is something special. Blending fact and speculation in the best traditions of the biopic, Ilan Duran Cohen’s The Jewish Cardinal is an intoxicating combination of ecclesiastical politics and very personal soul-searching, all bound into the indisputably real character of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the late Cardinal and…

October 30th will see the beginning of the 17th UK Jewish Film Festival, an event which has become one of the mainstays of the British cultural calendar. Yesterday we attended the star-studded press launch of this year’s screening schedule, and today we’re pleased to present our Top 10 festival picks. Mazel tov!

November rain getting you down? Does the prospect of another bleak, friendless Christmas make you reach for the whiskey and the revolver? Not to worry, there’s a whole plethora of festivals and events to take your mind of your hollow shell of a life!

We love you, independent cinemas, we dooo! In a bit to combat the Big Four’s relentless stranglehold over British cinema we like to highlight our favourite indie venues, and this week we’re lavishing our insistent and faintly suffocating love all over the matchless Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, a Mecca for fans of stage and screen alike.

Being shown as part of the UK Jewish film festival. Tolca Mama is a short film that gently explores one man’s grieving process during the final moments with his mothers ashes.

During the month of November London celebrates Jewish culture through film, showcasing an eclectic and thought provoking blend of feature length films, animations and shorts from around the globe. Best for Film takes a peek into the wonderfully diverse programme at this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival.

Screened as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival, Religion.com is a documentary exploring a unique socio-cultural dilemma in modern Israel. In ultra-orthodox Bnei Brak, the traditional Haredi Jewish community live for the most part without the internet. In a society where it was until recent times, illegal to even print the words ’email’ or ‘internet’ in a newspaper, can an advertising executive convince a Haredi Rabbi that it’s time for things to move into the 21st century?

What About Me? is a short film directed by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen (Jellyfish) and features an old man and his donkey – trying to cross a “military” checkpoint in the Israeli desert. What it is though truthfully, is a little more than that.

Since you all seemed to like our October Film Events blog (you lazy scamps), we’ve decided to make a habit of it. Read now, or be accused of wagon-jumping in a year’s time when BFF’s Film Events Blog is the new Time Out and Stephen Fry’s claiming he meets hygienic and available gentlemen in the comments thread. From Jewish festivals to Welsh horror, we’ve got it all!