Ahead of the beloved UK Jewish Film Festival, running 7-17 November in London, the JC is previewing three can’t-miss films exploring Jewish and Israeli life and culture. Friday Night Flop, a short comedy starring Tracy-Ann Oberman and her daughter Anoushka Cowan, marks Anoushka’s on-screen debut, and the pair tell Nicole Lampert what it was like collaboarting on their first film project together.

Meanwhile Gaby Koppel speaks to the directors behind two Charedi-centred films; the Israeli move Home tells the story of a young Charedi man breaking free of his community’s expectations with the help of technology, and documentary Rabbi Capoeira brings together the seemingly incongruous worlds of Orthodox Jews and Brazilian martial arts. 

Friday Night Flop: A poker drama with a lockdown twist

Somehow it isn’t cloying when Tracy-Ann Oberman and her daughter Anoushka Cowan hold hands and say they are best friends. As they talk about their first film project together, they frequently hug and curl up on each other; the warmth between them is genuinely touching.

The pride they have in each other is also palpable; including in Anoushka’s first film project, in which she plays her mother’s daughter. Friday Night Flop is a short film that perhaps had Tracy-Ann’s name written all over it – she was, after all, the only Jewish cast member of hit comedy Friday Night Dinner and is one of our most loved actors. She was asked to star in the sweet 15-minute comedy by a producer who asked if she thought 18-year-old Anoushka might want to appear as a troubled teen who has become obsessed with playing online poker.

In the film, with the help of a poker-playing rabbi played by Mark Fleischmann, she is coaxed out of her bedroom for a poker-themed Friday night dinner.

It is sweet and funny but also very human as it plays on the difficult relationship of parents with their teens, and teenage obsession with the online world.

It is one Anoushka, known by her mum as Annie, can really understand. “It reminds me of myself in that awkward lockdown period when everyone was just sort of in their rooms doing things online,” she says. “After lockdown it was really hard to get back to socialising with people and not just texting or Facetiming.

“It actually felt draining – easier to just to talk to people on your phone. It has taken me a while to get to the point where I can socialise without that exhaustion.”

Her mother remembers it well. “I think we had a pretty good lockdown but it was difficult for her generation because there was effectively two years where there was no going out, no socialising,” she says. “There’s a whole tranche of developing at that age when you should really be going out but that was all done online.”

Tracy-Ann, who is married to music executive Rob Cowan, did try and put Anoushka off the world of acting. Starring in Friday Night Flop, which will appear on the opening night of the UK Jewish Film Festival, was her first-ever time on a film set even though her mother has been on television since before she was born.

But Anoushka, who was part of the Globe Youth Theatre, found her own way there after being spotted by an agent while in a school play. The agent had no idea that she was the daughter of a famous actor.

“I said to her, ‘It is going to be very hard, nothing is going to come easily,’’ recalls Tracy-Ann. “But then one day she said, ‘This agent saw me in a school play and wants me to do some tapes.’ And I said, ‘Yes, do the tapes, but they won’t take you on.’ Fourteen hours later, they took her on. And because she has a different surname to me, they didn’t even know that she had a mother in the business.’

While having Tracy-Ann as a mother meant that she was seen immediately for Friday Night Flop, she still had to audition for the role.

Her mother admits she was “schlepping nachas” seeing how Anoushka acted on the set. “She was just so incredibly professional,” says Tracy-Ann. “It was her first film and the crew were really blown away. She understood her TV angles, something that took me ages to understand. And whether she was working on a close up or a long shot, she just got it completely. The crew kept saying to me, ‘she’s amazing’.”

Anoushka is on a year out after doing her A-levels. She is gathering work experience, doing a screen-acting course, and planning to go to university next year to study drama. She knows there will be accusations that she is a “nepo baby” and admits to the privilege she has – but having a famous parent is, of course, no guarantee of success.

“I’m so proud to have a mum in the industry and I have connections thanks to her and many opportunities,” she says. “But I know I still have to get jobs on my own and my agent had no idea who I was.”

Her mother adds: “When I went into this industry as a girl from Stanmore who’d never even met an actor it was like landing on Mars for me – a totally different world. The only role model, the only Jew I knew of, was Maureen Lipman. And I had to learn everything like theatre etiquette to making connections. Annie won’t have to do that but being my daughter isn’t going to win her big roles.

“She is a brilliant actor and writer who is really passionate about what she does and I hope that in a few years she’ll be pushing for me to have a role as the grandmother in her next big project.”

Anoushka first realised her mother was famous was when they were on a train on the way to Disneyland and a Doctor Who fan stopped Tracy-Ann and started crying because she loved her so much.

“I was mainly excited about going to meet Donald Duck and this woman was crying because it was my mum and I couldn’t understand how someone could be so emotional meeting her,” recalls Anoushka. “I suppose I got used to people asking for photos with her but for a long time I just didn’t get it. I think that changed when we went to a press night for Pretty Woman, which I was obsessed by, and we were arguing in the car but then we stepped onto this red carpet and I saw all these people knew and loved my mum and it gave me a different sort of respect for her.”

She’s also hugely proud of her mother for speaking out against antisemitism and the work she has done in repositioning The Merchant of Venice, Tracy-Ann’s critically lauded production in which she stars as a Cable Street Shylock, which is back in the West End in December.

“I think my mum is amazing,” says Anoushka. “And I hope that one day, if I have a platform like she does, I will be as brave. As a young person you want to stand up for what you think is right and you want to show you are proud of who you are but also you don’t want to make yourself a target. She has shown you can have a really great career and not hide who you are but be proud and stand up.”

For her part, Tracy-Ann admits that sometimes Anoushka does try and moderate her social media posts. “She’ll say, ‘Don’t post that! It’s provocative.’ She is more moderate than me and also talks to people in a way that I might not have the patience or clarity for. She’ll be a brilliant campaigner because she knows what’s right.”

Friday nights are special in the Oberman/Cowan household; a chance for grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins, to get together, make noise and debate. “It is always such fun to share stories with the family – everyone is loud, laughing, talking over each other,” says Annie. “It’s only just clicked in for me how much I am going to miss it when I go to university.”

Her mother takes her hand and kisses it, shuddering at the thought that next year her daughter is going away. “I honestly can’t bear the thought of her going to university,” says Tracy-Ann.

“That’s why my dream is that we get to work together again. Maybe in a sitcom. A sitcom that lasts for at least 12 years.”

‘Friday Night Flop’ won the 2024 Pears Short Film Fund for the UK Jewish Film Festival.

Tracy-Ann is presenting the opening night gala at the Curzon Mayfair on November 7 where it will be shown before the main feature: ukjewishfilm.org/film/friday-night-flop/

Home: A Charedi rebel who says no with his computers 

Seen from the outside, the Charedi community appears hyper-conservative, desperately clinging to the habits and customs of yesteryear and opposed to the slightest modernisation, whether they are Satmar or Lubavitch, Beltz or Skver.

But inside the world of yeshivas, stiebels and seminaries, change is happening, albeit at a glacial pace.

Two films screening at the UK Jewish Film festival give us a glimpse of what that means in reality by introducing us to some brave individuals, each with their own clear vision of a different future.

Home is the story of Yair, a young Charedi man who chafes against the expectation that he will lead a life of perpetual study bankrolled by his well-to-do in-laws.

Bored by yeshiva and desperate for financial independence, he sets up a computer shop in Geula, the heart of Charedi Jerusalem.

Yair, played with real conviction by Roy Nik, faces opposition that goes well beyond mere social ostracism.

Though he is forced to pay protection to the Orthodox authorities and allow constant supervision of his operation, his shop is a huge success. But it is condemned by hardliners as the work of the devil, selling technology that will corrupt their youth, and picketing turns to violence. The story is based on the true life experience of director Benny Fredman, who grew up Charedi in Jerusalem.

He says: “I had this feeling that I wanted to do something else, but you can’t express your feelings even to yourself, and you cannot talk with anyone about it. And I had this feeling from computers, I don’t know why.”

Fredman tells me that the attacks he faced were far worse in real life than depicted in Home.

It cost him financially and emotionally, but helped make him into the accomplished film director he is today.

And though he has stopped living the Charedi life, maybe the strangest thing about his story is that though his wife remains frum they are still happily married. He says: “Even in the dark side of the community, you can always find the light.” Two of their four children are religious and two secular.

Home, which has drawn in large Charedi audiences, received nine nominations at the Ophir Awards (the Israeli Oscars), and won two.

Rabbi Capoeira: Funky leaps and kicks powered by Afro-beats

Elsewhere in the strictly Orthodox world, Miki Chayat sees the Brazilian martial art Capoeira as the salvation for his Bnei Brak community. For him it is a vital counterpoint to the rigours of the Charedi lifestyle. Part dance, part martial art, part sport, it represents a radical departure from the traditions of the predominantly Orthodox city.

Yet we see in Barak Heymann’s documentary Rabbi Capoeira, he has won a following of young people – mainly boys, but separately a few girls too – who can see the benefits of what he is offering and turn up to his Acai studio to work out to pulsating Afro-beats.

Miki faces fierce opposition from those who say it’s all too secular and even sacrilegious: “I am fighting for the Yeshiva guy. With all the respect I have for the Torah, to get something to help him cope with life.”

It’s not easy. Miki and Orthodox business partner Revital face constant financial struggles to keep the studio going, sustained as they are by passion and belief in the project.

Director Barak Heymann says he fell in love with the pair “because they bring so much honesty, so much gentleness, so much sensitivity and so much love to their activity”.

And the idea was timely. “It filled my heart with optimism at times when things are so violent and so depressing in Israel.”

While Miki is trying to open hearts and minds within the Charedi community, director Heymann is firmly focused on the outside world, especially fellow left-wingers who see themselves as liberal and inclusive but have a blind spot when it comes to the 1.3 million-strong strictly Orthodox population of Israel.

He says: “I grew up as a secular man in an atmosphere of hating them and blaming them for so many things. And I think it’s a tragedy.” But he is optimistic. “I feel that more and more people within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community are developing deeper passion and desire to open up and to integrate in the global society in Israel, and wish themselves and families, kids and grandkids to live a life which is not one of poverty, isolation and ignorance, but rather of well-being and of a richer and wider perspective.”

Miki, he believes, is in the vanguard of that change.

Fredman agrees, telling me that there is a surge of young Charedim training as doctors, lawyers and accountants, something that is yet to happen here in London.

He says that in Israel there is a sizeable modern, forward-facing section of the community, who are not afraid of technology or the secular world.

He believes that progress is coming, whether by accident or design. “In Geula, there was no internet for a decade. But what happened during Covid? Suddenly nobody knew exactly what was going on.

“And in one month all of Geula was connected to the internet because in they wanted to know the news. So, the progress is there. You know it’s unstoppable.”

‘Home’: Sunday November 10, Odeon South Woodford, 6.00pm

Sunday 10 November, Phoenix, East Finchley, 6.30pm

‘Rabbi Capoeira’: Sunday November 10, JW3 Cinema, 7.15pm