This year's gala festival opening, Paris-Manhattan, is a frothy fairytale as light and inconsequential as your grandma's best spongecake - and it is all the better for that.

Without Woody Allen, Sophie Lellouche’s life would have been very different. She might never have discovered literature, music or philosophy, and she would definitely not be attending the London gala premiere of her movie Paris-Manhattan, which opens this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival — a debut rom-com which features a cameo appearance by Allen himself.

This year’s UK Jewish Film Festival will screen the hotly tipped Zaytoun, the first fruit of the newly-signed UK-Israel film treaty, in November.

The biggest ever UK Jewish Film Festival ended this week with organisers promising an expanded event next year.

Documentaries, short films and TV shows from more than a dozen countries made up the 76 screenings at 14 venues over three weeks.

Knowing that the programmers of the UK Jewish Film Festival have done most of the hard work before you, choosing films to see is more a matter of determination to be out and about nearly every night of the week — there are gems available throughout the festival.

'It's like an emotional roller-coaster. You're going to be scared, you're going to laugh and sometimes it's going to be dramatic," enthuses Israeli film director Navot Papushado, talking about the experience of watching a horror film.

Judy Ironside spends so of her much time in darkened rooms watching films, that she likes to be outside whenever she can, which is why we are sitting in a blustery Clerkenwell courtyard on what is quite a chilly October afternoon.

Ironside, the founder and executive director of the UK Jewish Film Festival, is enjoying the breeze.

Drag queens, a vodka baron, fake nuns and Israel's David Brent are just some of the colourful characters coming to London screens for the 15th UK Jewish Film Festival in November.

The festival will not tour to the regions as it has done in previous years, but instead plans to host regional screenings across the country at the same time as the 2012 UKJFF, making it a national festival.