A restaurant in Leeds might seem an unlikely place to begin a film-festival preview. But a short documentary about serving kosher and halal food under one roof offers a particularly northern route into this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival.
Fish, Chips & Faith, directed by Micaela Blitz and Miriam Rosenberg, is one of the new British films commissioned through UK Jewish Film’s Film Factory. Its subject is a place where food and community meet: an everyday setting with a story worth putting on screen.
That attention to the particular is a good way to approach the festival’s 30th edition. There are international stars, historical dramas and gala screenings. There are also families, friendships, music, faith, arguments and the places where people build their lives.
The festival opens in London on 5 November, with a nationwide tour running from 15 November to 3 December and an online programme available within the UK from 18 to 30 November. The organisers announce more than 70 films, including 50 world or UK premieres.
For northern audiences, the announced tour includes Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. It's definitely an invitation to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike.
The Leeds film belongs to a wider collection of short documentaries and dramas exploring British-Jewish life. Their scale leaves ample room for experiences that can be overlooked when a community is discussed only in general terms.
In Rambling, director Jack Levy turns his attention to the Pennine Wayfarers, whose walking has brought friendship and adventure together over half a century. The festival describes a group that has become a community of its own, travelling a route connected to British-Jewish history.
For us at MagNorth, that's a familiar and compelling subject: the ways belonging grows through doing something together. A shared walk, like a shared meal, can become part of the structure of a life.
Liverpool’s British-Jewish Life on Film screening also includes Primordial Chicken Soup, directed by Barney Pell Scholes and Daisy Abboudi. First shown at the festival in 2025, it explores the friendship of eight Scouse Jewish women who met more than 55 years ago.
Those subjects give the programme a valuable sense of place. The North appears through the people who live here, their relationships and the communities they sustain.
Other shorts range from a Welsh Jewish girl’s preparations for her Bat Mitzvah to an interfaith family’s disagreement when their son is cast as King Herod in a school Nativity. They suggest plenty of room for humour, awkwardness and the negotiations of family life.
Manchester’s programme opens on Thursday 19 November at Cineworld Didsbury, Parrs Wood, with When the Night Falls, directed by and starring Daniel Auteuil.
Based on a true story, the French drama follows a civil servant confronted with the deportation of Jewish children from Vichy France. Antoine Reinartz and Luàna Bajrami also star. The official event listing gives a 7pm start and an introduction by producer Adrien Nussenbaum.
The difficult historical subject asks audiences to consider responsibility under extreme conditions. It sits within a programme that also makes space for contemporary life and comedy.
Manchester’s other announced selections include The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), a comedy centred on a struggling traditional Jewish wedding entertainer, and We Met at Grossinger’s, a documentary about the Catskills resort that inspired Dirty Dancing.
A festival can hold those different registers together. Historical memory, comic invention and the pleasures of music and performance all belong within its scope.
A themed festival also gives audiences an opportunity to encounter several stories in conversation with one another. One film can unsettle an assumption left intact by another. A documentary’s close attention to an individual can complicate the broader language through which a community is described.
Jewish life encompasses different histories, places, religious practices and ways of belonging. This programme’s variety offers audiences a route into that complexity through cinema.
That's valuable for a publication concerned with the North’s cultural life. Representation becomes more substantial when it makes room for people’s ordinary pleasures and disagreements alongside the events that have shaped their history.
As Michael Etherton, chief executive of UK Jewish Film, puts it: “We hope everyone, Jewish or not, will join us.”
The invitation is straightforward: look through the programme, choose a story that interests you and make time for a film. A northern restaurant, a walking group or a friendship that has lasted decades might be the beginning.
All dates below are in 2026. These are selected screenings, not the complete northern programme.
- York: British-Jewish Life on Film, City Screen — Wednesday 18 November, 6.30pm.
- Manchester: opening gala, When the Night Falls, Cineworld Didsbury, Parrs Wood — Thursday 19 November, 7pm.
- Manchester: British-Jewish Life on Film, HOME — Sunday 29 November, 3.45pm.
- Liverpool: British-Jewish Life on Film, FACT — Monday 30 November, 6.30pm.
- Sheffield: British-Jewish Life on Film, Showroom — Wednesday 2 December, 6.15pm.
The announced northern venues also include Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds and Everyman in Newcastle. Check the festival calendar for their individual listings.
The online programme runs from 18 to 30 November, within the UK only.
The online festival pass is £25, individual online features £15 and online shorts are free. In-cinema prices and concessions vary by event.
CLICK HERE for the programme and booking links. Check certificates, content information and venue access details for your chosen screening.
