F for Fake

F for Fake is a 1973 essay film directed by and starring Orson Welles, built around the art forger Elmyr de Hory and de Hory's biographer Clifford Irving, who was separately exposed as the author of a fraudulent authorized biography of Howard Hughes while the film was in production. Rather than a conventional documentary, Welles assembles the material through rapid, playful editing and his own on camera narration to blur the line between fact and fabrication, extending the film's questions about authenticity to Welles's own career, including his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Widely reassessed by later critics as one of Welles's major late works, it is regarded as an influential example of the essay film and of documentary technique used toward openly deceptive ends.