Etgar Keret: Movies & Box Office

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer whose prolific output spans short stories, graphic novels, screenplays, and children's books, earning him a reputation as one of the most innovative voices in contemporary Hebrew literature. Born on 20 August 1967 in Ramat Gan to Polish Holocaust‑survivor parents, he grew up as the third child in a family that carried the weight of memory and displacement, experiences that later surface in his often bleak yet humorous narratives. After studying at Ohel Shem high school and the prestigious Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme at Tel Aviv University, Keret released his first collection, Pipelines (1992), which initially went unnoticed, but his breakthrough arrived with Missing Kissinger (1994), a compendium of fifty ultra‑short stories that captured public imagination and secured a place in Israel’s matriculation curriculum. Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s he continued to experiment, collaborating with cartoonists Rutu Modan and Asaf Hanuka on titles such as Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Fun and Pizzeria Kamikaze, while his prose collections like The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God (2004) and Cheap Moon (2002) were translated into numerous languages. Keret’s talent extends to screenwriting; his novella Kneller’s Happy Campers became the cult film Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) and, together with his wife Shira Geffen, he co‑directed the Cannes‑winning Jellyfish (2007). He has lectured at Ben‑Gurion University and Tel Aviv University, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Sapir Prize, and the Charles Bronfman Prize, and continues to publish daring works such as Fly Already (2019) and the forthcoming Autocorrect (2025). Living in Tel Aviv with his wife and son Lev, Keret remains a pivotal figure who reshapes the short‑form narrative with a blend of colloquial language, surreal imagination, and poignant social commentary.