Good Bye, Lenin!

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) is Wolfgang Becker's German tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. In the autumn of 1989, Alex's mother — a devoted East German socialist — collapses from a heart attack and slips into a coma. She wakes eight months later, and the country she believed in is gone.

Doctors warn that any shock could kill her. So Alex hides an entire revolution inside one apartment. He hunts down old jars of brands that vanished from the shelves, films fake newscasts with a video-geek friend, and props the GDR back up wall by wall. Daniel Brühl plays the son whose love drives him to ever bolder lies, Katrin Sass is the mother he protects, and Chulpan Khamatova plays nurse Lara, who grows weary of the charade.

The film won the César for Best Foreign Film and six German Film Awards, turning the fall of the Berlin Wall into a tender story about loss and devotion. Funny, bittersweet, and quietly heartbreaking. Stream Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) online on iFILM.