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Released
1999 · FILM

Jakob the Liar

A desperate Jewish shopkeeper in a WWII ghetto fabricates a secret radio broadcast to lift his community’s spirits, risking deadly retaliation as hope becomes a dangerous weapon against the occupying Nazis.

“When all hope was lost, he invented it.”

Directed by
Peter Kassovitz
Written by
Jurek Becker, Peter Kassovitz
Runtime
120 min
ComedyDramaWar

Synopsis

In 1944 in Poland, a Jewish shopkeeper named Jakob is summoned to the headquarters of the ghetto after being caught outside after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast discussing Russian troop movements. After returning to the ghetto, Jakob shares the information with a friend, and soon rumors spread that there is a secret radio operating within the ghetto.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 22

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Claire SimpsonShot by Elemer RagalyiScored by Edward ShearmurDesigned by Luciana Arrighi

Box Office

1999 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$5.0M

Budget$45.0M
Worldwide gross$5.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $5.0M — 100% of worldwide · International: $300 (0%)

Opening weekend: $2.1M — 41% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $2.7M — 55% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,200 theaters

Also known as

  • Jakob der Lügnerde
  • Jakob le menteuren
  • Jakob il bugiardoit

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