Jakob the Liar

This movie and its 1974 predecessor were both based on the novel "Jakob der Lügner", written in 1969 by the East German author Jurek Becker. As Jews, Becker and his parents were placed in a Polish Ghetto in 1939. In order to save him from deportation, his parents gave the Germans a false birth date; Becker forgot his real birth date and was never able to discover it later in life. Although he was eventually sent to the concentration camps Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, both he and his father survived the war; his mother died of malnutrition after being freed from the camp. His novel "Jakob der Lügner" won the Heinrich-Mann Prize for literature in 1971; Becker died in 1997 of cancer.

At the beginning of the film, when Jakob starts chasing the paper, it is clearly light outside, even though it is 7:30 pm in the winter in Poland. Then, 25 minutes later, when Jakob told to go to the police building, it is quite dark. In the winter, the sun would have completely set hours before.

Special thanks to the city and peoples of Piotrków, Poland, the city and peoples of Lódz, Poland and the city and peoples of Budapest, Hungary.

Featured in Siskel & Ebert: American Beauty/Blue Streak/For Love of the Game (1999)