Jakob the Liar is a 1999 American-made 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.

In early 1944 Poland, a Polish-Jewish shopkeeper named Jakob Heym is summoned to the German headquarters after being falsely accused of being out after curfew.

After hesitating, Jakob decides to use the opportunity to spread hope throughout the ghetto by continuing to tell the optimistic tales that he has been allegedly hearing on his secret radio.

Jakob the Liar was filmed in Budapest, Hungary (the birth city of director Peter Kassovitz), as well as Lódz and Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland.

[2] As in the novel, an alternate ending was made for the film in which, following Jakob's death, the train carrying the Jewish prisoners to the concentration camp is halted by Soviet troops and the occupants released.