While you were sleeping

The plot of 'Goodbye Lenin' is as straightforward as they come. The year is 1989, and an East German woman who believes passionately in her country's socialist political ideals falls into a deep coma. Meanwhile Communism crumbles, so does the Berlin Wall and everything she believes in is swept away by the inexorable force of capitalism. When she suddenly awakes eight months later, a doctor tells her son and daughter that the slightest shock might trigger another potentially fatal heart attack, and so they have to try and conceal the collapse of the Wall from her. Cue all manner of elaborate strategies aimed at protecting the secret.

The film might hinge on a single "joke", but that hardly does it justice. Though lightened by frequent touches of humour, it never descends into farce. A moving personal story, it's also a powerful documentation of the incredible pace with which events unfolded, and of one of the most dramatic periods in recent European history. It makes some valuable points about the way in which East Germans were soon disabused of their illusions of freedom as the realities of capitalist society hit home. Beautifully acted, too.