The opening film for this year's UK Jewish Film Festival is an Israeli movie with themes echoing the #metoo movement against sexual harrassment.
Working Woman, directed by Michal Aviad, has been nominated for the festival's Dorfman Best Film Award.. Its main character is Orna, an ambitious career woman, who tries to prove herself to her boss by giving up her free time, but is then harrassed by him. The film's Gala Screening is at the BFI Southbank on November 8.
This year’s festival runs to November 22 at cinemas across London, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Brighton and Glasgow, with many films, special events, panel discussions and Q & As.
Films will be shown from across the globe, including from Israel, USA/ UK and France.
Another highlight is Promise at Dawn, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Pierre Niney, directed by Eric Barbier. The Gala Screening will take place at Curzon Mayfair on November 22. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a Jewish mother, in this powerful adaptation of Romain Gary’s memoir.
The Centrepiece Gala is the London premiere of Three Identical Strangers, the award winning documentary directed by Tim Wardle which won the Special Jury prize at Sundance Film Festival. Raised by their respective adoptive families within a hundred-mile radius of each other, triplet siblings Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland and David Kellman were oblivious to the fact that each had two identical brothers until a chance meeting brought them together, aged 19, for the first time since birth.
Michael Etherton, the Chief Executive of UK Jewish Film, said:
“We are proud to announce Working Woman, Three Identical Strangers and Promise at Dawn as our gala films for 2018. Working Woman is incredibly current, tackling the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, and we are delighted that an amazing 38% of our films this year are from women filmmakers. Our Centrepiece Gala, Three Identical Strangers, is one of the most extraordinary and disturbing true stories of recent years, and Promise at Dawn has all the drama and epic scale that one could hope from a Closing Night Gala."
The UK Jewish Film Festival has recently been added to the BAFTA Qualifying Festivals List for its Short Film categories.
For more information about the festival www.ukjewishfilm.org/
Member tickets will go on sale 20th September with all tickets on sale from 26th September.
