Watch history being made as Goodbye, Lenin, a 2003 German tragicomedy movie, brings to your screen the beautiful story of a woman who wakes up from a heart-attack-induced coma. Directed by Wolfgang Becker, it is loosely based on the last two years of Vladimir Lenin's life when capitalism was on the rise, pressurizing Eastern society to either adapt to it or face the consequences.
Having lost her husband in 1989, Christiane Kerner stays loyal to Socialist East Germany. She wakes up eight months after a coma with the Berlin Wall fallen and the world completely changed. Her son Alex decides to keep her in the dark to save her from the shock.
Goodbye, Lenin won six European Film Awards, including Best Picture, and was nominated for the 2004 Golden Globe® Best Foreign Language Film.
Fans can rent Goodbye, Lenin on Apple TV
Depending on your region, you may be able to access certain movies and TV shows on Netflix, including those from your country of origin. You can watch Goodbye, Lenin on Netflix in four different countries.
The movie is not available for streaming on major US OTT services. However, it is available for rental on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, and Vudu at an extra cost. In the UK, OTT platforms do not stream the movie. But you can rent it on Amazon Video. In Canada too, you must rent the film on Apple TV or the Microsoft Store.
In Australia, it can't be streamed on some of the major OTT platforms nor can you rent or buy it. So, the only way to watch the movie there is by using a VPN service to unlock the region/country barriers of some popular streaming platforms.
In France, you can watch the movie streaming on Canal+, Universcine Amazon Channel, and Molotov TV.
What is Goodbye, Lenin about?
Goodbye, Lenin takes you back to 1989, the East Berlin riots before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Christiane who is a loyal communist after watching her son, Alex (Daniel Bruhl) being beaten up by the police on television, suffers a heart attack and goes into a coma. While she lies unconscious, the Berlin Wall is brought down and Germany is unified. The world is changed, new, and free.
Later, when she regains consciousness, the doctors advise her son to take good care of her because her condition is delicate, and even the slightest shock could cause her death.
Alex has no other option but to create a fictional world for his mother, a world where Eric Honecker is still in office, capitalists rule and the state television is all praises for the regime.