After becoming a cult hit in both the Netherlands and Israel, this funny and moving documentary about the amazing Israeli-Polish storyteller Etgar Keret, is coming to Poland, at the Krakow Film Festival! Etgar Keret and the filmmakers Stephane Kaas and Rutger Lemm will join this Polish premiere for a Q&A.
ETGAR KERET: BASED ON A TRUE STORY is a film by Dutch director Stephane Kaas and writer Rutger Lemm, who’ve been friends since high school. A few years ago, they got the idea for a versatile documentary about their favorite author: Etgar Keret.
About his short stories, his absurd life, but above all about the importance of storytelling. A mixture of documentary filmmaking and fiction, autobiography and lies, and a love for the arts. To their surprise, Keret enthusiastically supported their wild plans. The film investigates how Etgar Keret, with his many short stories and his 'truthful' anecdotes, became such an amazing storyteller. Kaas and Lemm filmed Keret and his inner circle in Tel Aviv, Israel, within the sometimes harsh reality of Israeli society, and during his New York, New York book tour. Family (Shira Geffen), friends (Gur Bentwich, Arik Kneller), and famous colleagues like Jonathan Safran Foer, Gary Shteyngart and This American Life host Ira Glass were interviewed as storytelling-experts, and asked to retell their favorite Keret-story. The filmmakers find out that Keret’s compulsive storytelling is an attempt to deal with a dark past, and to find optimism where you least expect it. To do justice to Keret’s associative thinking and his rich life story, the filmmakers chose to use different storytelling techniques: animated fiction stories, made by BAFTA-winner Nina Gantz, reconstructions of Keret's anecdotes, and a lively montage with back stage peeks. The end result is a lively, funny and moving hommage to storytelling, an essential tool for survival.
