Sommersby is a 1993 period romantic drama directed by Jon Amiel from a screenplay written by Nicholas Meyer and Sarah Kernochan, adapted from the historical account of the 16th century French peasant Martin Guerre.

Based on the 1982 French film The Return of Martin Guerre, the film stars Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, with Bill Pullman, James Earl Jones, Clarice Taylor, Frankie Faison, and R. Lee Ermey in supporting roles.

John "Jack" Sommersby left his farm to fight in the American Civil War and is presumed dead after six years.

Despite the hardship of working their farm in Vine Hill, Tennessee, his apparent widow Laurel is content in his absence, free from an unpleasant and abusive husband.

He persuades the townsfolk to pool their resources to buy seed, offering them to share-crop on his land, and to sell them their plots at a fair price once the mortgage is cleared.

Jack also offers former slaves the opportunity to purchase the land they agree to help work on causing animosity from several white citizens.

Upon taking the townspeople's money, he buys the tobacco seed claiming that the crops will raise enough funds to rebuild the town church.

All those that bought in on the deal set to work, transforming the plantation into a breeding ground of promise and prosperity.

Laurel's attempts to save her husband focus on the question of his identity: whether this "Jack" is who he claims to be, or a lookalike who met the real Sommersby whilst in prison for deserting the Confederate Army.

Several witnesses are brought up to discredit this Sommersby as a fraud; they state that he is Horace Townsend, an English teacher and con artist from Virginia.

One witness says that the man currently posing as Jack defrauded his township of several thousand dollars after claiming he wanted to help rebuild the schoolhouse there.

The site's consensus states: "Sommersby stumbles as a consistently compelling mystery, but typically solid work from Jodie Foster and Richard Gere fuels an engaging romance.

The 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai has a protagonist (played by William Holden) who has assumed the identity of his dead commanding officer in the hope of receiving better treatment as a prisoner of war.

In Libel (a 1959 film, and a 1935 play), Sir Mark Loddon is accused of being an imposter by Buckenham, with whom he was a POW during the war.

Similarly in Mad Men, Richard "Dick" Whitman goes to war in Korea and his commanding officer Lt. Donald "Don" Draper is killed in an artillery barrage.