Jacob the Liar (1975 film)

Jacob the Liar German Jakob der Lgner is a 1975 East GermanCzechoslovakian Holocaust film directed by Frank Beyer and based on the novel of the same name by Jurek Becker. It starred Vlastimil Brodsk in the title role.

In a Jewish ghetto in Germanoccupied Poland, a man named Jakob is summoned to the Gestapo office on a charge he broke the curfew. As the soldier who sent him there merely played a prank on him, he is released, but not before hearing a radio broadcast about the defeats of the German Army. As no one believes he went to the Gestapo and came out alive, Jakob makes up another tale, claiming he owns a radio a crime punishable by death. He then starts encouraging his friends with false reports about the advance of the Red Army toward their ghetto. The residents, who are desperate and starved, find new hope in Jakobs stories. But it all ends as the Germans deport the people to their death in the extermination camps.While still attending university, Jurek Becker heard from his father a story about a man from the d Ghetto who owned a radio and passed news from the outside world, risking execution by the Germans. As Becker became a screenwriter in the early 1960s, he decided to compose a film script based on the story. OnJanuary 1963, he submitted apages long treatment to the DEFA studio, the stateowned cinema monopoly of the German Democratic Republic. The studio approved of the work and authorized to further develop it. Becker was paid 2,000 East German Mark. OnFebruary 1965, he handed a 111 pages long scenario over to the studio, and a full script of 185 pages was submitted by him onDecember. ........

Source: Wikipedia