Good Bye, Lenin! director Wolfgang Becker dies at the age of 70

Director Wolfgang Becker

Veteran filmmaker Wolfgang Becker, director of the hit 2003 German film "Good Bye, Lenin!", has passed away. He was 70.

As per his family, Becker died following a serious illness, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Becker was born in Hemer in what was then West Germany and studied film in Berlin. His student movie, Butterflies, an adaptation of a short story by Ian McEwan, won the student Oscar.

In 1994, Becker co-founded Berlin production company X Filme Creative Pool with his directing friends Tom Tykwer and Dani Levy and producer Stefan Arndt. His first feature for X Filme, Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (Life is all You Get) (1997), was his commercial breakout. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won three awards. X Filme was a driving force in revitalizing the German cinema scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s with such features as Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998) and Levy's Go for Zucker! (2004).

The company's biggest hit was undoubtedly "Good Bye, Lenin!". The dramedy starred Katrin Sass as a devoted socialist with a weak heart who falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She sleeps through German reunification and when she awakes, her son (Bruhl) tries to keep the truth from her to prevent a fatal shock. He designs an elaborate plan, involving repacking new Western foods in old East German jars and getting a friend to tape fake news broadcasts, to convince his mother that nothing has changed.

Becker is survived by his wife, Susanne, and their daughter, Rike.

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