Documentary film, proposed by Ambra Tonini, co-produced with Lyon Capitale TV, with the support of the SUD region, PROCIREP, ANGOA, CNC Développement renforcé et production, Officina Koiné, Piemonte Doc Film Fund and Torino Film Commission, master class in Lussas in August 2019.
Streen Distribution Award at the Torino Underground Cinefest in Turin, Professione Documentario Award in Turin, Paolo Gobetti Filmare la Storia Award in Turin, Special Mention ‘Best Remembrance’ at the Caorle Festival, Best Ecological Film at the Bridge of Peace Film Festival, Best Mediterranean Film selection at the Catania Film Festival, AmiCorti International Film Festival 8th Edition and Paradise Film Festival.
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.