Jakob the Liar is a 1999 American war comedy-drama film directed by Peter Kassovitz, produced by Steven Haft, Marsha Garces Williams and written by Kassovitz and Didier Decoin. The film is based on the book of the same name by Jurek Becker. The film stars Robin Williams, Alan Arkin, Liev Schreiber, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and Bob Balaban. The film is set in 1944 in a ghetto in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust and tells the story of a Polish-Jewish shopkeeper named Jakob Heym who attempts to raise the morale inside the ghetto by sharing encouraging rumors that he claims he has heard on a radio. It is a remake of the 1975 East German-Czechoslovak film "Jakob der Lügner".