Goodbye Lenin!Set in East Berlin at the time of the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany, Good Bye Lenin! tells the story of a young man whose arrest at a protest coincides with his model socialist mother having a heart attack and slipping into a coma. Eight months later the wall no longer exists, East and West Germany are united and the mother wakes up. Warned that any excitement could kill her, the young man along with his slightly less eager sister throws himself into recreating East Germany in his mother’s apartment. Through the main plot device of Alex’s deception, Good Bye Lenin! skilfully and often humorously explores how this period of great excitement, uncertainty, trepidation and promise affected ordinary people whose lives were turned upside down overnight.