Jacob the Liar

In 1944, in a ghetto in eastern Europe, Jakob Heym happens to overhear a German radio broadcast: the Soviet army is advancing. Trying to stop his friend Mischa from risking his life over a few potatoes, he says he has a radio. Keeping a radio in the ghetto is punishable by death. The news spreads, and Jakob has to invent something new every day. Frank Beyer directed the film from Jurek Becker's novel, which the two of them adapted together. Becker himself had been in a ghetto and a camp as a child. It is a co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Vlastimil Brodský plays Jakob and took the best actor award in Berlin. It became the only East German production ever nominated for the foreign film Oscar.