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There’s nothing like a film to give you the atmosphere of a place, so if you’re planning to visit Berlin check out these films to give you an atmosphere of the place and help you brush up on your German. On our recent stay, the Circus Hotel had a selection of Berlin DVDs which you could borrow to watch in your room - what a cool idea. We spent one evening exhausted after sightseeing watching Lola run round Berlin - rather her than me.

Run Lola Run
Punky red-head, Lola receives a call from her boyfriend who has to repay 100,000 deutchmarks fast to a gangster and is about to commit a robbery to get the money. Lola sprints through the streets of Berlin to try and find another way to get the money and the film goes through different scenarios which each have different outcomes. The last one is the happy ending, although I did think to myself - Lola love, he’s not worth it!

See more film clips here

Goodbye Lenin!
The film is set in East Berlin around the time of re-unification. The main character Alex lives with his sister and mother Christiane who suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. While she is in the coma the Berlin wall falls, but when she awakes several months later, Alex realises that the shock of a changing world may be too much for her to take, so he embarks on an increasingly elaborate deception to recreate that the world she knew.

Der Himmel über Berlin - Wings of Desire
Damiel and Casiel are angels who watch over the streets of Berlin, their presence felt by some but seen only by children. Damiel falls in love with Marion, a Circus trapeze artist and decides that he wants to renounce his immortality to become human and be with her. Peter Falk appears as himself in the film, revealing that he was once an angel too. See Potzdamer Platz before it was redeveloped from a bombed out wasteland to a shiny new office, retail & media complex.

I’ll be popping along to my local arty video shop this weekend - let me know if there are any other Berlin films I should be checking out, or if you have any favourites which capture the essence of a destination for you. I love to be inspired!

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