Daniel Bruehl and Katrin Sass star in Good Bye, Lenin!

The awards - dubbed the Lolas - are among the most lucrative in the world with prize money of 2.9 million euros (�2m).

Good Bye, Lenin! is bittersweet tale of a young man who cares for his mother when she falls into a coma, before recreating Communist East Berlin in their home when she wakes up.

Among the accolades it picked up at the Berlin ceremony were best film, best actor for Daniel Bruhl and best director for Wolfgang Becker.

The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman as author Virginia Woolf, was named best foreign film.

Kidman won best actress for her performance at both the Oscars and Baftas.

The Hours won best foreign film

Good Bye, Lenin! has been released in more than 30 countries since winning the Berlin Film Festival best European movie award in February.

Universal

It has become Germany's biggest box office film of the year, taking 35 million euros (�24.6m).

"I never would have dreamt this film would touch a nerve the way it has," director Wolfgang Becker said.

"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."

Katrin Sass was nominated for a best actress Lola for her role as the staunch Communist mother, but lost out to Hannelore Elsner, who won for the lead role in director Oliver Hirschbiegel's Mein Letzter Film (My Last Film.)