The comedy “Good Bye, Lenin!” by director Wolfgang Becker was released in German cinemas in 2003. It tells the story of a single mother and staunch socialist (Katrin Sass) who falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and has to be protected from any excitement when she wakes up months later. Her son Alexander (Daniel Brühl) then decides to conceal the fall of the Wall from his bedridden mother and let the GDR live on in the family apartment. Screenwriter Bernd Lichtenberg experienced the fall of the Wall as an East German teenager in Berlin and incorporated his experiences into the script. While the film initially received mediocre and - especially from East German critics - negative reviews, it quickly became a box office success in both the old and new federal states and was subsequently sold to more than 60 other countries.