Goodbye Lenin! is the coming-of-age story of a young man who struggles for his own psychological and moral growth while trying to protect his sick mother from the shock of learning that the Berlin Wall has fallen. The film was released in 2003, but takes place from October 1989 to about a year later, highlighting the period before the fall of the wall and the social, political and economic changes that occurred in Germany following unification. Goodbye Lenin! takes place in East Berlin and was filmed mainly on Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin and in a 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 "tragicomedy" most appropriate. The story of Good Bye 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) try to stop their mother (Katrin Saß) to learn that the East German state was dissolved. It is in this context that Alex must come to terms not only with his mother's failing health, but also with his own identity in a rapidly changing space. To protect his mother, Alex recreates the GDR for her, but his portrait does not accurately reflect the ideals of the former socialist state. Instead, this “new” RDA reflects Alex’s personal beliefs and opinions about how he wants the state to be. Therefore, the parallel universe that Alex creates in Good Bye Lenin! is an idealized representation of East Germany created in an attempt to protect himself from the tragedy of losing his mother and help him accept a new world order...... middle of paper.. ....ex seeks to comfort him with a timeless present by 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 goodbyes are both a tribute to his mother and his country. He created a final broadcast that “depicted German unification as a collective demonstration of support for socialism rather than capitalism” (Doughty, 38). Alex realizes that the RDA he created for his mother is the one he wanted to have. With this realization, Alex is able to let go of the space he 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 about his past. He now understands that he can maintain a connection with his personal past and his mother, but that he is still able to move forward in a unified Germany..