Garbo: The Spy (also known as Garbo, the Man Who Saved the World) is a documentary by Spanish director Edmon Roch, who also wrote the screenplay along with Isaki Lacuesta and Maria Hervera.

Filmmaker Edmon Roch uses interviews, newsreel footage, vintage photographs, clips from Hollywood espionage dramas and WWII propaganda films to tell the true story of one of the greatest and most elusive double agents of his generation in Garbo: The Spy (aka Garbo: El Espia and Garbo: The Man Who Saved the World). The documentary stars Rupert Allason, Jose Antonio Escoriza and Aline Griffith.

British intelligence agent was called “Garbo” because they regarded him as “the greatest actor in the world.” And perhaps he was. He was good enough to persuade Nazi authorities that he was working for them even as he was serving the Allies at the same time.

For his efforts in aid of the Allies, ‘Garbo’ received the MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). In an ironic twist of fate, following the war ‘Garbo’ ended up encountering one of his German handlers, who gave him the Iron Cross for his contribution to the German war efforts. The Nazis never realized that ‘Garbo’ had fooled them, and he earned the distinction of being one of the few people during WWII to receive decorations from both sides.

Jaun Pujol (Garbo) was a Spanish double agent who provided German intelligence with information that he’d received through a network of 27 spies in Europe and the U.K. Of course, those spies never existed, the information he gave the Germans was largely false. Pujol’s insistence to the Germans that the Normandy landing was just a distraction helped make the successful D-Day campaign possible. Neither Germans nor the British knew the true identity of Pujol. He was reported dead in 1949 but three decades later it was discovered that Pujol was alive and using another identity in South America.

This documentary is fantastic.