Documentary film, proposed by Ambra Tonini.
With the support of the Piedmont Region (Italy).
Co-produced by Lyon Capitale TV, with support from Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (développement renforcé), PROCIREP – Société des Producteurs and ANGOA, Région SUD Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in partnership with CNC, Officina Koiné, Piemonte Doc Film Fund and Torino Film Commission.
Six siblings gather on the family farm near Mantua to build a bicycle. Piece by piece, this potentially laborious mechanical process becomes a game for the siblings, who retrace the buried memories of their father’s history and his friendship with the Steffans.
Their father, Angelo, had been sent as a POW to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he was tortured. At the end of his strength and very ill, he was taken in by a German family to work on their land.
Together with 11-year-old Edmund, the youngest member of the family, he had fun building a bicycle from recycled materials.
On Edmund’s advice, what had started out as a hobby became the perfect means of transport to escape Germany and return home to Italy.
Angelo kept this story to himself until, in 1960, married with six children, he received a letter from Edmund. They remained friends until Angelo’s funeral in 1998.
The two families would not meet again until 2015, when Angelo’s son Moreno, my father, visited Edmund’s son Uwe in Minden, northern Germany. Together they went to the Bergen-Belsen memorial, where Angelo had been a prisoner.
Back at Moreno’s home in northern Italy, the bicycle is finally finished. The whole family uses it on the country roads around Mantua.