The Economic Times

Sunday, June 8, 2003

Good Bye, Lenin! dominates German film festival

ERIK KIRSCHBAUM

REUTERS

BERLIN: An international box office blockbuster "Good Bye, Lenin!" has scooped up seven German "Lola" awards at the world's most lucrative film competition, taking the German Film Prize contest by storm. 

The bittersweet German comedy about a son's undying love for his ailing mother won top awards at Germany's equivalent of the Oscars for best film, best director, best actor and four other gold prizes in the $3.4 million (2 million pounds) contest. 

"The Hours," starring Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman, won the contest's best foreign film, which had been announced in April when the German nominations were made. Kidman had also won the BAFTA film award for best actress for her role. 

"Good Bye, Lenin!," acquired by distributors in more than 30 countries since winning the Berlin Film Festival's prize as "Best European Film" in February, has topped Germany's box office this year with $41 million and 5.7 million viewers. 

"I never would have dreamt this film would touch a nerve the way it has," director Wolfgang Becker told Reuters. "You don't have to know a thing about German history to understand it. A son who loves his mother -- it's a story you find everywhere." 

The awards were presented before a gala audience of 2,000 and the red carpet was rolled out for the arriving stars as the 53rd annual competition attempted to imitate Hollywood's Academy Awards ceremonies. 

Daniel Bruehl won the "Lola" for best actor for his portrayal of a teen-age son who recreates a slice of Communist East Berlin six months after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 to protect his ailing mother. 
His mother, a devoted Communist, falls into a coma just before the Wall fell and wakes up eight months later. Doctors warn the son that the upheaval sweeping the formerly Communist country could send her into shock and kill her. 

So he painstakingly recreates a small East German world in their apartment, removing all signs of Western capitalism that had overrun eastern Germany to keep her in the dark about the end of the Cold War. 

The German government underwrites the lucrative awards, which are distributed among dozens of films that won nominations, as an indirect subsidy to domestic filmmakers. 


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