Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Watching Etgar Keret at Sundance

With so many great films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this week, it’s impossible to focus on them all. But it would be shame to miss “What Do We Have In Our Pockets,” a whimsical, endearing animated four-minute short by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Goran Dukic and based on a short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret.

“What Do We Have In Our Pockets,” is from Keret’s “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” collection, published in English translation in 2012. It’s about how the inordinately large number of items a young man carries around in his pockets leads to a love story. “Be prepared,” is basically the narrator’s motto and the take-away lesson. It’s also a fun testament to the virtues of clutter.

The actors are director-screenwriter Azazel Jacobs and Diaz Jacobs, and the visual style is part hipster, part children’s “I Spy” books. See for yourself:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.