Jakob the Liar (1999)

Jakob the Liar is a 1999 American Holocaust film directed by Peter Kassovitz, produced by Steven Haft and Marsha Garces Williams. It is written by Kassovitz and Didier Decoin based on the 1969 German novel Jacob the Liar, by Jewish author Jurek Becker. The film stars Robin Williams, Alan Arkin, Liev Schreiber, Hannah Taylor-Gordon and Bob Balaban. The film is set in 1944 in a ghetto in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust and tells the story of a Polish-Jewish shopkeeper named Jakob Heym, who attempts to raise the morale inside the ghetto by sharing encouraging rumors that he claims to have heard on a radio. An earlier film based on the novel is the 1975 East German-Czechoslovak film Jakob der Lügner. The movie was a critical and commercial failure: it grossed only $4 million against a $45 million budget, and received negative reviews by critics, with many comparing it unfavorably to the similarly themed Italian movie Life Is Beautiful (1997).