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Jakob the Liar is a 1999 low-budget movie directed by Peter Kassovitz and starring Robin Williams, Liev Schreiber, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and Bob Balaban. The movie is set in 1944 in a ghetto in Poland, in the times of the Holocaust. The movie is based on the book by Jurek Becker. In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto. Jakob uses the chance to spread hope throughout the ghetto by continuing to tell favorable tales of information from "his secret radio." Jakob, however, has a real secret in that he is hiding a young Jewish girl who escaped from a camp transport train. A rather uplifting and slightly humorous film about World War II Jewish Ghetto life. These lies keep hope and humor alive among the ghetto inhabitants. The Germans learn of the mythical radio, however, and begin a search for the resistance hero who dares operate it.
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