Alex Kerner's mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell. When she wakes up he must try to keep her from learning what happened (as she was an avid communist supporter) to avoid shocking her which could lead to another heart attack.
Acting
Katrin Sass's fragile warmth makes you complicit in the lie.
Direction
Becker turns a family's living room into a collapsing empire.
Production
The GDR apartment is a time capsule you can practically smell.
Director
Wolfgang Becker
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The filmmakers recreated 1989 East Berlin in actual East Berlin buildings scheduled for demolition—sometimes shooting hours before bulldozers arrived.
Released when Ostalgie (nostalgia for East German culture) was peaking, the film became Germany's highest-grossing domestic film ever—partly because it let viewers laugh at a tragedy they were still processing.
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