Set in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust, the film centers on Jakob Heym (played by Vlastimil Brodský), a Polish Jew who attempts to raise the morale inside the ghetto by sharing encouraging rumors that he claims he has heard on an (imaginary) radio.

In a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland, a man named Jakob Heym is accosted on the streets by a watchtower guard as it is supposedly after curfew.

While still attending university, Jurek Becker heard from his father a story about a man from the Łódź Ghetto who owned a radio and passed news from the outside world, risking execution by the Germans.

On 9 February 1966, the director-general of DEFA, Franz Bruk, submitted the script to the chairman of the Ministry Of Culture's Film Department, Wilfried Maaß, and requested permission to commence production.

Maaß replied the scenario should be historically accurate: in Becker's work, the Red Army freed the ghetto just before the residents were deported, although Jakob died on the barbed wire fence.

[4] Beyer decided to cast Czechoslovak actor Vlastimil Brodský for the role of Jakob, and DEFA began negotiations with the Barrandov Studios.

[13] Jacob the Liar was first published in 1969, and became both a commercial and a critical success, winning several literary prizes, also in West Germany and abroad.

[14] The acclaim it received motivated the West German ZDF television network to approach the author and request the rights to adapt it.

[17] The film was financed by both companies, with each paying half of the 2.4 million East German Mark budget, which was rather average for DEFA pictures made in the 1970s.

He chose to conduct outdoor photography in the Czechoslovak city of Most, the historical center of which was undergoing demolition; he believed the ruins would best serve as the site of the ghetto.

[19] West German actor Heinz Rühmann, who was offered to depict Jakob by ZDF while its directors believed they would receive the rights, insisted on portraying him even in the DEFA production.

Erich Honecker had personally decided to reject him, in what Katharina Rauschenberger and Ronny Loewy called "probably his only productive decision in the field of art... Happily, the film was spared from Rühmann".

[18] Jacob the Liar was never expected to be a commercial success: DEFA officials who held a preliminary audience survey in 1974 estimated on 28 May that no more than 300,000 people would view it.

[22] In spite of this, Jacob the Liar became an international success: it was exported to twenty-five foreign states, a rare achievement for an East German film, especially since only five of those were inside the Eastern Bloc: Hungary, Cuba, Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia.

"[24] Hans-Christoph Blumenberg of Die Zeit commented: "Gently, softly, without cheap pathos and sentimentality, Beyer tells a story about people in the middle of horror...

"[25] The New York Times reviewer Abraham H. Weiler wrote Jacob the Liar "is surprisingly devoid of anything resembling Communist propaganda... Brodský is forceful, funny and poignant".

[26] On 1 October 1975, Becker, Beyer, Brodský, actor Erwin Geschonneck, dramatist Gerd Gericke and cinematographer Günter Marczinkowsky received the National Prize of East Germany 2nd class in collective for their work on the picture.

[36] Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman present a similar interpretation: it was "the first film to link Jews with the theme of resistance, albeit a peculiarly unheroic type".

Jakob was still a representation of the stereotypical effeminate Jew, reminding of Professor Mamlock, and although he "exhibits a certain degree of agency", he still does so out of almost maternal, nurturing instincts.

It pays no tribute to history's victors, only to its victim... By turning the negatives into positives, Beyer conveys a story of hope... And makes the impact of Jakob's lie on ghetto life tangible".