10/04/2003

The German film industry has a well-deserved reputation for quality and variety but is in need of a much higher international profile. Especially within Europe. One German director who has had no problem in attracting both popular and critical acclaim at home is Wolfgang Becker, who made this year’s surprise hit, Good bye, Lenin! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Wolfgang Becker
film profile]. The film was seen by over 5 million people at home and is about to be released in Italy (on 9 May), France (10 September) and Spain (7 November). It will also cross the Pond.

Goodbye, Lenin! will open the German Film Festival that will run in central Rome from 10 to 14 April. They could not have chosen better! This highly original film amuses the audience whilst portraying the drama and irony of the consequences of German reunification after the Berlin Wall came crashing down.
“When I first read this story,” said Becker, “I was hooked. A woman goes into a coma prior to the fall of the Wall only to wake up a few months later when the world as she knew it has cased to exist. I asked myself how she would react, what she experiences. Despite the excesses that comedy requires, I tried to make the most realistic and human story that I could.”

The film stars Katrin Sass who, unlike Becker, actually lived in East Germany. “I didn’t share the same experiences as the character I play but during filming, it was as though I had woken up from a thirteen-year coma. I started remembering what my life was like then and laughed at the funnier events while some of the more dramatic events made me very sad. Becker managed to portray these events with a great sense of reality.”