Goodbye Lenin! is the coming-of-age story of a young man struggling with his psychological and moral growth while trying to protect his ailing mother from the shock of learning that the Berlin Wall has fallen. The film was released in 2003, but is set from October 1989 to about a year later, highlighting the period just before the fall of the Wall and the social, political and economic changes that occurred in Germany following unification. Goodbye Lenin! is set in East Berlin and was filmed mainly in Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin and in an apartment building near Alexanderplatz. The film's subject matter is depicted through the juxtaposition of dramatic and sad moments with moments of comedy and satire making the genre classification of "tragicomedy" the most appropriate. The story of Goodbye Lenin! focuses on the life and growth of a young man, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl), as he, his girlfriend Lara (Chulpan Khamatova) and his sister Ariane (Maria Simon) attempt to protect their mother (Katrin Saß) from 'learn that the East German state has dissolved. It is in this context that Alex must deal not only with his mother's precarious health, but also with his own identity in a rapidly changing space. To protect his mother, Alex recreates the GDR for her, but his representation does not exactly describe the ideals of the former socialist state. Instead, this “new” DDR reflects Alex's personal beliefs and opinions about what he wants the state to be. Therefore, the parallel universe that Alex creates in Good Bye Lenin! he is an idealized representation of East Germany created to protect himself from the tragedy of losing his mother and to help him come to terms with a new world order...... middle of paper ......ex seeks comfort of a timeless present idealizing the socialist state of his childhood, which in his mind will prolong the inevitability of his mother's death. At the end of the film, Alex's final farewell is both a tribute to his mother and his country. He creates a final broadcast that “depicts German unification as a collective show of support for socialism rather than capitalism” (Doughty, 38). Alex realizes that the DDR he created for his mother is the one he wished he had. Through this realization Alex is able to let go of the space he has created for himself to protect his identity because he understands that letting go of this state and moving forward doesn't mean he has to forget everything in his past. He now understands that he can maintain a connection to his personal past and his mother, but is still able to move forward in a unified Germany..