It is a proud day for Communist East Germany ~ their first Cosmonaut, Commander Sigmund Jaehn, is being launched in an international Soyuz mission. The Party leaders are happy, and the grainy TV footage is appealing to young and old across the Soviet Block. In the home of Alex, however, there has been a more personal and shorter journey. His father has left his family (wife Christiane, son and Alex's older sister) in Berlin, for West Germany. We first see the family with the children trying to see the news of their Cosmonaut, and their mother trying to fend off questions from some plain~clothes policemen regarding their father and his absence. As ...  Read the complete review

Being fluent in German and having lived there for a year, I take pleasure in watching German films, not just for the language but revising the culture. I do enjoy it when top German films, such as Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) and Downfall become released over here as at least I can share my love of German films with my friends and family. However I must admit to being puzzled that this film was given a UK release. Not because it isn't good or funny, as it is both, but because the focus of the comedy is something very few British people will understand. Where as Run Lola Run has an understandable storyline that isn't definably German, and Downfall focuses on ...  Read the complete review

Good bye Lenin was a film that i did not expect to blow me away. First of all, subtitled, the thought of watching a subtitled film made me cringe. However, i was wrong and this film opened my eyes to european subtitled films. It revolves around a son trying to hide his mother, who has just come out of a coma, from the realties of changing germany and the fall of the Berlin wall in horror that she will return to her previous state. In order for that to happen a number of changes are made, for example, the TV is swapped to a older version and everything is set up in the home to how it originally was. This film in its unique and magnificant and paves a ...  Read the complete review

“Goodbye Lenin” has won several awards – Best European film and Best Actor at the European film Awards, and was nominated for both the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes. Director Wolfgang Becker’s subject matter is East Berlin at the end of the eighties, as the Berlin Wall comes down and ‘freedom’ (and probably most likely) consumerism beckon for the East Germans. Central to the story is the Kerner family. Christiane (played by Katrin Saa) is a committed socialist, a staunch supporter of the Socialist ...  Read the complete review

I actually had this reccomended to me by a friend. I'm learning German, and looking for German films I can watch with the English subtitles on, and she said I would enjoy this. As it turns out, the German in this film is a touch too fast for my novice skills and I ended up going on subtitles alone. However, the film was good enough that I didn't actually care. It's a story set in Germany, centring around the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is a small family - before the Wall falls the mother has a heart attack and goes into a coma. This lasts years, through the wall falling, through capitalism finally being allowed in, through her son and daughter's ...  Read the complete review