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Lazlo Nemes’ Holocaust film took the top prize at the festival, which closed with the UK premire of Amir Wolf’s Fire Birds.

A jury comprising Nfts director Nik Powell, filmmaker Mike Newell, actress Kerry Fox, actor Jason Isaacs, producer Michael Kuhn and actress Sarah Solemani has presented Son Of Saul with its Best Debut Feature Award at the 19th UK Jewish Film Festival (Nov 7-22).

Accepting the prize during a video message, director Lazlo Nemes said: “It’s an honour to receive this award from such a prestigious jury. It’s very special for me having my film at the UK Jewish Film Festival which showed my short film a couple of years ago.

“Thanks on behalf of my entire crew and cast. People think about the Holocaust more and more as something abstract. With Son of Saul I wanted to give it a human face.”

Ukjff CEO Michael Etherton said: “Our commitment to supporting new creative...

Yuval Delshad’s debut centres on a a family of Iranian immigrants.

Fresh from its Toronto world premiere and still unreleased at home, Yuval Delshad’s debut feature, Baba Joon beat all the competition in sight to be crowned Israel’s best film of the year at the annual Israeli Film Academy Awards ceremony.

As such, it will represent Israel for next year’s Foreign Language Oscars.

Delshad’s Farsi-spoken drama portraying the conflicts inside a family of Iranian immigrants living off a turkey farm in the south of Israel picked up five Ophir awards, including best film, best music, best cinematography, production design and casting.

Significantly, all three of the film’s adult leads, including Navid Negabhan (Homeland) are non-Israeli Iranian actors living in the West.

Sharing second place, Erez Tadmor’s Eretz Petzhuah (Wounded Land), took home three awards for best director, best actor and best make-up while Elad Keidan’s Hayored lemaala (Afterthought) collected...