Jakob the Liar (1999)

Directed by

Marek Brodzki, Peter Kassovitz

Genre

drama film, comedy film, war film, comedy drama

Country

France, Poland, United States, Hungary

Runtime

2h

Rated

PG-13

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 406 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In a 1944 Polish ghetto, a Jewish shopkeeper invents news from a radio he does not have to give other residents hope. He spreads rumors that appear to be good news about the war's progress.

somberbittersweetheartfeltunderstatedgentletensemelancholichopeful

What happens

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, Armin Mueller-Stahl, 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, which also featured Mueller-Stahl. 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). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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