Good Bye, Lenin!

An East German communist woman (Kathrin Sass) slips into a coma after having a heart attack in October 1989. She awakens eight months later, and her doctor warns her son Alex (Daniel Brühl) that any surprise or shock could endanger her life. Alex takes the diagnosis to heart. He recruits his sister, a close videographer friend and some neighbors to dupe his ailing socialist mother into believing that nothing has changed in the country even though the Berlin Wall has fallen and capitalism has slithered over her beloved country. The elaborate ruse gets progressively more convoluted and unhinged, in a subtle, comic and tenderhearted story about the reunification of both a family and a nation. M.H.